The Fabric of Life
by holyfant
Summary: The fabric of life rearranges itself around the re-emergence of Sherlock. Post-TRF, Sherlock/John
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

When Sherlock came back, John went into a shock that was like being underwater. His body felt like it was under siege, was being compressed, being forced in on its own boundaries. Pressure on his lungs, on his ears, a dangerous heaviness on the giving-in strength of his skull, a dull pounding the only sound that he heard, and his sight lined with a shifting blurriness that seemed to fit, in this moment where past and present crashed into each other with the speed of light.

–

Of course it was just like Sherlock to return from the dead when John had finally got a grip on himself again, and had finally assembled different pieces of his life and had puzzled them into a ground to touch down on, a steadying platform, a floor to the pit of despair he had, at first, in the breathless, sleepless first months after Sherlock's suicide, feared to be bottomless. He had finally been able to peer out over the edge of the hole he had fallen into again, and was back on his feet, scrabbling upright.

And then Sherlock came back, with a light breeziness that he really should have had absolutely no right to, that suggested other places, other lives, other climates. True to form, he was like a hurricane, and he knocked John off his feet, like he'd done since that first moment, when he'd flicked the alien colourfulness of his eyes over John and had enjoyed teasing out everything he could find in the crinkles of John's eyelids and the wrinkles in his jacket, when he had been a swirl of coat and performance and had given John a wink of all things, a thing that he hadn't ever repeated again.

The things that had begun to matter, as soon as anything began to be capable of mattering again – his work, the newness of his flat, Mary and the possibilities that were in her eyes, the hesitant beauty of London in early spring, Greg and Molly with their surprisingly unwavering support, Ian and Sharon and Bill from New Breath and their much-needed harshness and almost clear-cut understanding of such a complex reality – receded from him, small points of light in the shifting fabric of life, of which the stitches unravelled again around Sherlock stepping back into it.

Just like Sherlock. Just like Sherlock to make him lose a grip on everything again.

–

Sherlock met him on neutral ground; the small, decidedly sad park two blocks from their old flat. John was uncomfortably aware that this was probably to allow John to come and decide in the moment whether he wanted to talk to Sherlock or hide instead. And then he was even more uncomfortably aware of the fact that there was really no way he could know for sure, anymore, because how could he know anything about a man who he hadn't seen in two years, a man who'd been doing things that he was so utterly uninvolved in they might as well never have met.

–

The text had been, for lack of a better word, earth-shattering. Or maybe world-shattering was more apt, because the earth under his feet didn't suffer one bit, it was as confidently present as ever; Sherlock was many things but an earthquake he only ever was in a proverbial sense. It was just _John_'s earth that shattered, his personal bit of the universe, his roots that had finally tentatively started looking for new underground waters to tap into, and that were now upended, torn loose harshly. So, maybe, life-shattering, even if his body, traitorous as it was, continued beating and breathing and flowing and working hard to keep his borders closed as always.

And it wasn't even because John hadn't suspected. He'd spent a lot of time trying to clear Sherlock's name when he had finally emerged out of the crush of his depression and got tangled in the mania that followed, at first out of a desperate need to gain a sense of identity again (because who was John, if Sherlock wasn't Sherlock? And that was painful enough in itself, that he needed Sherlock to have been who he thought him to be in order for John to be who he thought himself to be), later because there were clues, there were doubts – _it was a trick, a magic trick_, Sherlock had told him in the phone call that haunted him in his sleep, and after a while he was sure that Sherlock was talking about something else. The jump was the trick. There were clues, he was sure of it. Mike vehemently denied telling Sherlock anything about John before that first meeting, so Sherlock couldn't have known who to research. That night at the pool – and this was speculation, but it felt like evidence – couldn't ever have been performed by anyone; not Moriarty, and more tellingly not Sherlock, because John remembered that look on his face as John had emerged, a blankness that spoke of more shock than he'd ever known Sherlock to display ever after, and he suspected that maybe Sherlock thought for a fleeting moment that _John was Moriarty_. It made him feel better for having thought for a fleeting moment that maybe Richard Brooks was real; because the faith was stronger the more it was challenged, and that was how he comforted himself now. So he'd suspected. And he'd felt inadequate, unable to pull the facts together without Sherlock's gentle or harsh prodding. It was all over the place, it scattered just as he himself did, trying to do too many things at once just so he would have no energy left to lie awake. He wasn't Sherlock. He never pulled it off; though there was the small, bitter victory of convincing Greg, who put more faith in his gut feeling than John thought he fairly deserved. There was also the strangeness of Molly, who needed no convincing, it seemed, but who had still tried to get him to leave things alone. The zeal with which he tried to solve the puzzle had waned over time, as his life rearranged itself bit by bit, and his anger at Sherlock grew into a more distinct, focused form.

Still, despite his suspicions, the text had been shattering.

Because it had said

_Tomorrow 11 A.M., that park near Baker St.  
SH_

not _John_ or _I know this must be strange_ or even just _Hello_ or _I'm back_ or _So I'm alive_ or _I hope to see you there_ or, though he knew it was irrational to expect from Sherlock, _I'm so sorry, please come_. Not even _that park near Baker St, you know the one. We had coffee there once_, because that would have meant something, that would have meant Sherlock had memories of him at all.

Moving as though through oppressive layers of water, he punched the wall of his beautiful, new, un-bulletmarked, Sherlock-less flat until his knuckles bled, and screamed out his rage wordlessly, feeling as though the sound was stolen from him, and he smeared blood on the wall, and when he stepped back at last he realised with the detachment rolling in to save his brain from burning up that he'd have to redo the painting job on the wall.

–

And he did spend an amount of time hiding that became embarrassing, because he was actually acutely sure that Sherlock knew he was there, squatting ridiculously in a bush, peering around the sad form of tree that manages to survive in London.

But he needed this time, this moment. He was trying to persuade his stomach to go back down into his belly instead of trying to fight its way up into his mouth. He was trying to get his brain to believe his eyes as they rested on the dark, thin figure with its hands in the pockets of its coat.

Sherlock was standing with his back to him, appeared to be watching the entrance of the park – and John wished, irrationally, that he'd look around for John, though he knew that Sherlock wasn't doing that precisely to grant him this moment of alone-ness, even with Sherlock there. He just wanted to see Sherlock's face and have the idea, maybe the illusion, that he was seeing Sherlock without Sherlock seeing him in return, just this once, and in his fantasy that could make the difference in either direction, what he'd find there. But then he remembered Sherlock's face. He didn't even know what it was capable of now, and he'd known it was capable of extraordinary things even before, waxen, mask-like, utterly blank, molded into fakeness so easily, so disgustingly easily.

Sherlock's hair was a few shades lighter and a bit shorter than it had been. He was wearing a new coat. Or, maybe not new, but a different one, though the style was similar. It touched John in a way he hadn't expected, because he'd dreamt about this moment, and a new coat had never factored into it. It felt irrationally unfair. Sherlock was still tall, though, still decidedly tree-like. He was smoking, fast puffs that in anyone else would indicate nerves, and John guessed that shouldn't surprise him, but it did, a bit.

He felt like he was going to throw up.

But time was ticking away, and if there was one thing that he'd become more aware of in the past two years, it was that time slips away and never returns (even if Sherlock standing there seemed to contradict that, but he knew that the years between them would still be there, would have to be scaled somehow), so before he had any kind of feeling that was somehow like _I'm ready for this_he decided that he would simply never be ready for this, never, and got up and walked up to Sherlock, surprising himself in the process.

And Sherlock turned around before he reached him; he must have been aware of him more intensely than John thought. He was wearing glasses, a wiry, thin frame; he wasn't wearing gloves, a cigarette between the pale shock of his fingers like an exclamation mark; and there was a scar over his right eyebrow that looked new, and, and, and

His mouth was tense, but his eyes were so focused behind the newness, the slight barrier of his glasses, and when they made contact with John's, John felt it like a physical slap in the face, instinctively stopped walking and then, spitting in the face of all of his fantasies of this moment, actually did double over, and threw up.

"Christ," he heard Sherlock mutter, making his way over to him, and it was the first word he'd heard in that voice in two years, apart from _keep your eyes fixed on me_ playing on a loop in his dreams, and John would have laughed if his breath wasn't being stolen away by the violence of his heaving. After a couple of seconds there was the steady grip of Sherlock's hand in his hair.

"John," he said.

"No," John managed to get out, and then flinched at himself, because that was the last word he had said to Sherlock two years ago, before Sherlock had stopped listening, and it shouldn't have been the first, it had no right to be the first. He retched a couple of times more, his mouth stinging with acid, spattering his trousers with sick, and probably Sherlock's coat, too, and he couldn't care, but then it was over; his stomach sank back down, and his lungs struggled to get reacquainted with air. He spat a last time, wiped his mouth and took some steadying breaths, trying to tell himself he wasn't doing it do avoid looking up at Sherlock. He was shivering, humiliation now foremost in the mesh of emotions he was caught in. "Don't touch me," he wheezed, but Sherlock either ignored it or didn't hear.

"Are you all right?" Sherlock asked. His hand was still on John's head, a warm pressure of fingers on skull. It was too unreal. It was too real.

"Yes," John said, because _no _had no right anymore, it had to be banished at least for a little bit, and it didn't do anything justice, anyway. And then he couldn't put it off anymore, and he straightened up. Sherlock's hand fell away from him.

They stared at each other for a bit, until Sherlock grimaced at the growing tension.

"I didn't think you'd be quite so disgusted to see me again," he said, voice almost insultingly level.

John had to stop the chuckle because, really, Sherlock hadn't deserved it yet. He hadn't deserved any of it yet, and it was already unfair that Sherlock got to see how much the simple sight of him affected John, and it was even more unfair that he could probably read with precision how much John's heart was hammering, how much he felt like he might have a heart attack soon.

"Well," Sherlock said at his silence. Then: "Hungry?"

–

"Just like you to want to get Chinese after I've just thrown up violently," John said on their walk there, breaking the solidifying, the congealing silence around them, because if he was honest he couldn't stand it, though he liked that he could tell Sherlock couldn't either.

Sherlock flashed a small smile at him, the small smile without teeth, and for a second it was almost like the past two years hadn't happened. "You haven't eaten anything substantial since – since yesterday," he said, and John knew the hitch had to cover up what he had been going to say, which was _since I texted you_, "and now you've thrown up all of the tea, too, so you need to eat."

"Don't know if dim sum is the best option, though," John said, but Sherlock ignored him, except for, strangely, his hand coming up to touch John's sleeve, curling around the worn leather. It was that, that one small movement, that brought John to suddenly look at him, and see his face again, and to think _I'm actually seeing his face again_. Belatedly, tears sprang into his eyes and he blinked rapidly to try to dissolve them.

In the two years that Sherlock had been gone the restaurant had been taken over by new owners, but Sherlock informed him the door knob was still quite satisfactory, and he ordered John's favourite, steamed egg dumplings. It was stupid, but that Sherlock remembered, that _Sherlock _remembered, Sherlock who deleted the solar system because it didn't matter, was somehow so touching that John hid his face behind his hands for a bit, trying not to cry and not entirely succeeding.

Sherlock was looking at him with a startling earnestness when he removed his hands.

"I'm sorry, John," he said, and that did it, of course, the sob forcing its way out of John's throat was ugly and loud, and he couldn't even help it.

Sherlock looked uncomfortable, but didn't say anything, just reached across the table and curled his hand around John's, and held on as John tried to stifle his crying for a couple of minutes, and then finally got his breathing back under control.

"For what?" he asked when he'd recovered a bit. He hooked a thumb around Sherlock's fingers to keep them in place, because he suddenly, fiercely, needed them there, he needed something to tell him that it wasn't all just an even more cruel joke than it already was.

Sherlock's surprise showed. "What do you mean?"

A big, shuddering breath. "What are you sorry for?" Because he needed him to say it, this time. John couldn't go on filling all the cracks on his own, not about this.

Sherlock cleared his throat. "I, um," he began, and then seemed to make a decision, "I'm sorry for not contacting you. I'm sorry I had to lie to you." He looked pained, then pushed on. "I'm also very sorry for what you've been going through." He looked at John with some anxiety, as though looking for a sign that it was enough. It wasn't, not really, but it was for now, maybe – and John couldn't say that he was entirely sure that anything that could be said, anything that could be put into words would ever really be enough.

John nodded and some of the tension seemed to bleed from Sherlock's mouth. "Will you tell me?" he quietly asked, after a couple of seconds of silence.

"Yes," Sherlock said immediately, then looked distinctly distressed for a moment, as though he regretted it, as though it had slipped out before he knew what he was saying. He removed his glasses from his face, and John liked that; it was like one more barrier was vanishing between them.

"Do you really need those?" John inquired casually.

"No," Sherlock said, glancing at them as though he was seeing them for the first time.

"Then why are you wearing them?"

Sherlock smiled a little, just a little. "It's like with Clark Kent. People forget faces easily, especially if they're just that bit different."

John couldn't imagine anyone forgetting Sherlock's face, and it took him a moment to realise that he was staring at it, at those austere features, even more pointed than they were two years ago. He realised Sherlock really did need to eat, too. His lungs seemed to have forgotten the concept of drawing in air for a second. _He's here_. He shook himself out of it, while Sherlock just held his gaze, somewhat uncertainly. He tried to aim for levity: "Referencing popular culture? So you're not actually who I thought you were? Wrong bloke returned from the dead?" And he wondered at himself, at the ease with which he delivered it, as though his stomach wasn't doing somersaults inside him, as though he didn't want to bruise Sherlock into a hug of violence and hold him there just so he could be sure this wasn't a dream.

Sherlock's face performed a strange mix of smile and grimace. "It was something to do."

"What, read Superman?" Sherlock's mouth twitched. It was an alien thing, an impossible thing to try to imagine, Sherlock reading Superman.

And then John remembered that he had absolutely no clue what Sherlock had been doing these past years, where he'd been, who he'd been with, in what kind of circumstances he had existed, what names he'd had, what he'd looked like, what kind of friends he'd had if any, what kind of enemies, what kind of unimaginable hobbies like reading comic books. "Sherlock," he said involuntarily, as though his mouth was still getting used to saying it again, in this wholly old and wholly new context of actually saying it _to Sherlock_.

Sherlock looked at him with a focus that was so intense John had to consciously will himself to keep looking at him.

"John," Sherlock returned, as though he, too, had to get used to it.

"Can you tell me why?" John said under his breath, so softly he was almost sure Sherlock couldn't have heard, but Sherlock's hand tightened on his.

"He was going to kill you," he said, flatly. The emotion drained from his face, as though he was putting on a mask. It was something that John had seen many times, but now he wanted to scream at it to go away.

"Moriarty?" His throat was dry.

"Yes, Moriarty, evidently," Sherlock went on, as though John must have known that all this time, as though John had been there for the realisation. And of course, John had known in a sense, but Sherlock seriously treated it as though it was shared knowledge between them. It was so familiar it hurt.

"Kill me?"

"And Mrs. Hudson. And Lestrade." Sherlock's eyes closed for a moment. A muscle was nervously twitching at the corner of his mouth. "He would have had all of you killed if I hadn't jumped."

_God. So you saved all of us. You great fucking wanker, you machine, you emotionless automaton, you, of all people, jump off a building and tell everyone you love that you pulled their legs all their lives just so they could continue living, never knowing what you did for them._ It was too much, and John couldn't stand Sherlock's gaze anymore for a moment, and closed his eyes to escape the pressure of it, the otherworldly presence. It was too monumental, it was huge as a universe, it couldn't fit inside John Watson, it couldn't fit inside this dingy Chinese restaurant, London itself couldn't hold this. John felt dizzy. He had to consciously resume breathing, feeling a panic attack lurking at the edges of his consciousness, ready to spring if he allowed it. He focused on the buzz of blood in his ears, willing it to ground him in his body somehow. He was here. _With Sherlock._

"John, are you all right?" Sherlock's voice was careful.

Their dumplings arrived. John nodded. He wasn't, of course, but _no_ really had no place in this conversation anymore. Sherlock needed _yes_, and in spite of himself, John felt himself responding to that need. And of course, it didn't make sense yet; because how had he _known_, how had he _survived_, but Sherlock was looking at the food, his face a construction of blankness, and John knew that that was it for now. So he picked up his chopsticks, feeling like a pastiche of a human being.

He asked just one more question: "Is it over now?"

"Yes," Sherlock said, and then repeated, as though he'd only just discovered the word: "yes."

And it was nothing like what John had envisioned – he didn't get to punch Sherlock in the face, he didn't get to scream, he didn't get to say _do you even have any idea_, he didn't get to walk out, he didn't get to have Sherlock follow _him _for once, he didn't get to crush Sherlock in a hug that was meant both to pain and to love, he didn't get to be strong, he didn't get to see Sherlock cry for once, he didn't get to tell Sherlock anything about himself, he didn't get to hear any of the real whys. But how they were there, how two years seemed to have receded into background noise somehow, how it insanely felt almost exactly as before, how they ate steamed egg dumplings that were so delicious even Sherlock was making appreciative noises, and how Sherlock hadn't pulled his hand from John's at all, even after John's thumb had released his fingers, how he was clumsily eating with his chopsticks in his left hand, and how it seemed that maybe he needed John's hand to hang onto, too – it was more than enough. For now.

–

"Where do you live now?" John said as they lingered on the doorstep of the restaurant, slightly awkwardly. Sherlock seemed as unwilling to leave as he was.

"Mycroft's got me checked into a posh hotel somewhere in the centre," Sherlock responded with a grimace.

"Mycroft?" John asked, taken aback.

"Yes," Sherlock said, slowly, "he's been... he's been helping me out."

"He knew? All this time?" The fucker. The absolute wanker.

"Yes." Sherlock seemed to know what he was thinking, and he frowned. "He's a prat, John, but I quite strongly asked him not to tell you."

"Okay," John said, though there was the beginning of anger blooming in his chest; anger, that had been notably absent until now, because Sherlock's presence, his face, his voice, in the end had only just made him want to be in his presence again, but if he knew himself this anger would manifest itself at one point. Not now, though.

After a pause, Sherlock asked, carefully, "Where are you living?"

"Flat in Southwark," John mumbled.

The silence seemed meaningful. "Would you..." Sherlock said, then stopped for a bit. "If we can find something again, would you maybe –"

"Yes," John said, too quickly, without thinking because it didn't require any thinking, he said it, though he shouldn't have, because his flat was wonderful, and Mary had been wanting to move in with him, and he had been wanting her to, but that only occurred to him after he said yes, and after Sherlock's face folded into a genuine smile, and relief was actually readable on his face, and he couldn't seem to stop his hands from coming to rest on John's shoulders, and, well. It was far too early, John didn't understand anything yet, didn't know if he would, ever, didn't know if he could live with Sherlock again, didn't know if he could learn to be around something again that he'd had to work at for two years to unlearn. But it was the way it was. He couldn't help himself, like he never had when it came to Sherlock.

The fabric of life remolding itself around Sherlock.

"Great," Sherlock said, then amended, "I mean, good. Fine. We'll find something. I'll... I'll be in touch."

"So will I," John said, and Sherlock squeezed his shoulders.

–

On the walk home, which passed in somewhat of a daze, he remembered that he hadn't wanted any of it, that his life had finally been going in the right direction, and that he had come here with the intention of telling Sherlock that he couldn't do it.

He touched his face, as though trying to make sure it was still there.

Apparently he _could_ do it. And something in him had decided that without consulting the rest of him; it was that part that had always come whenever Sherlock called, that had ignored all of his instincts that he was allowing Sherlock too much control for common sense, that didn't care about common sense one way or the other. He swore quietly, and stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk for a moment, trying to identify the teeming ball of emotion in his chest, and found that he couldn't isolate anything, and couldn't handle anything, so he just took a breath and filed it away for later; like he'd done so often in Afghanistan.

When Mary texted him to ask where he was, he remembered that they'd had a date.

She opened the door for him, smile immediately slipping off her face when she looked at him. He couldn't answer any of her questions, and just fell into her, numb, into her reassuring solidity, the earthiness of her that made his body feel less like an alien territory, that made him feel less like smoke, less like he had been wiped away by Sherlock's eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

When Mary quietly, worriedly asked him if he was sure it hadn't been a dream, he couldn't tell her for certain that he was. They were in bed; the morning light was clean and crisp as it fell onto them, and the previous day seemed like it had been a rupture in the time and space continuum, like Sherlock had just fallen in through a crack by accident. The only evidence he could present her was the blood crusts on his knuckles from when he'd almost broken his hand on the wall, just after Sherlock's text. She accepted his certainty, though, with an easiness that made his heart ache.

"Okay, so he's back," she said, and a thoughtful expression sank over her face. "He's... not dead."

"Apparently not," John said, and leaned back against the pillow with his eyes closed, trying to have the sensation of it counteract the confusing jumble of emotions that he was caught in. Mary put a hand on his thigh and that helped, too. Exhaustion was circling him like a predator; he'd barely slept. He'd spent most of the night wondering at the fact that she was sleeping next to him, undisturbed, and at the fact that across London, many people would be sleeping, unaware of the fact that Sherlock Holmes was among them once more. He'd had a moment in which he'd thought of what Sherlock might be doing now – not sleeping, surely, though he'd looked tired; maybe cleaning out as much of the minibar in his hotel room as he could, just to annoy Mycroft, or maybe trying to suss out the sexual kinks of the hotel staff. Or walking around London. Getting reacquainted with it. He'd left Mary sleeping and went to stand in the living room for a bit, just to force himself to feel like he was there, being grounded by the vague shapes of her furniture in the dark, and feeling a weight, heavier than anything he'd ever felt, settle inside him as he told himself that he probably couldn't imagine what Sherlock was doing, because he was someone else now, someone who had been away from more than just London, more than just people.

"Where has he been?" she continued, jolting him from his thoughts.

"Absolutely no idea."

He could hear the cocked eyebrow in the pause. "I thought you talked to him?"

He laughed a small laugh. "I threw up on his feet, and then we had Chinese together." Her hand tightened and he opened his eyes, to find her looking defiant, and worried. "Mary," he began.

"I'd like to meet him," she cut him off, and there was a stubbornness in her voice that he knew well by now.

"I guess that... I guess that could be arranged," he offered, but he knew that it would be a while before he allowed Mary to meet Sherlock, because they were from two different worlds, different times in his life that would now have to sync, impossibly, and he wasn't there yet by any stretch of the imagination.

There was a silence between them. "Does he have any idea –" she began, slowly.

But he cut in, with a strange kind of defensiveness that seemed unnecessary at a question that he had been burning to throw in Sherlock's face just a day ago: "Yes, he does, Mary. He does." Though John wasn't actually sure that he did.

"When will you be talking to him again?" she then asked, and he irrationally wished she hadn't, because he didn't know, and he wanted to.

"Soon," he said tersely, "he said he'd be in touch."

She made a strange noise. "He comes back from the dead, he – he's put you through hell from what you've told me, and that's probably only one per cent of what really happened, he's let you believe that he... And then he says he'll _be in touch_?"

"Mary, you don't know what kind of commitment that is from Sherlock. Being in touch. It's... It means a lot from him." She was looking at him with questions in her eyes, and he hoped she wouldn't ask all of them.

"And then he'll tell you more?" she prodded.

"Yes. Yes, I think so." He cleared his throat. And after a silence, in which his heart beat in this throat, and he knew that he shouldn't, but he still did, because he wanted to, inexplicably wanted to, though he knew that Sherlock was upsetting the frail new balance of his life far more than he should allow: "He... He asked me to be flatmates again."

The way her face fell was heart-breaking. "And you said yes," she said, flatly. She already knew him quite well, though they'd only been together for five months.

"Yes," he said, feebly, unnecessarily, and closed his eyes again, because he didn't feel up to any of it right now.

She sensed his unwillingness and was unsettled by it. "And you're not even going to talk to me about it."

"You and I hadn't decided anything," he mumbled, evading her question in a sickeningly transparent way.

"God, John," she said, and she sounded sad, so sad.

He sat up at that, because he did owe her this, he did. "Mary, I lived with him for eighteen months and then I thought he was dead for two years. I just feel like... I feel like it's unfinished." She blinked. "He's my best friend," he urged, even though he wasn't even really sure what that meant anymore.

She looked even more worried at his explanation, but nodded slowly, and accepted the kiss he gave her as a small peace offering.

–

He called in to the clinic and asked if they had any use for him. The answer was no, and then he didn't feel like a real person for a bit, as though what made him him had been stolen away from him in the depth of night and he was just a skin containing the nothingness of gravity. He was full of a restless energy that he had no use for, that only wanted to reach for his phone and tap in Sherlock's number so he could hear Sherlock's voice, and his annoyance at being called instead of texted, and be, if not comforted, then at least reassured that he hadn't imagined it.

He almost did, and then looked at the screen and noticed that he'd used the old number, his fingers having taken the route of least resistance, his muscle memory apparently being even more stubborn than his narrative one. It felt wrong to erase the numbers, going back, eating them one by one, as though he were deconstructing Sherlock with every backspace, bringing him back to zero, and then, even less, not even a space anymore. Death lay in many small things.

And so did life, of course, but life was changing by definition, and that was hard enough – he wasn't sure he could handle death being a changing thing too, after all – after all the sleepless nights and panic attacks and ill-advised drinking that he'd only been able to fully quit after Harry, of all people, had told him she was worried about it. After all the fighting with ghosts, with hopes, with the growing realisation that some boundaries could never be crossed, not even by Sherlock, because even he hadn't been exempt from being a body; he'd emerged from the struggles, the winner in one sense and the loser in another as he had accepted, for his own sake, that Sherlock was never coming back. The whisper that said _a trick, John, a magic trick_ had been banished to the realm of dreams, quite literally, playing backwards and forwards, always bleeding into _keep your eyes fixed on me_; because time was a strange, pushing, insistent thing, and two years had put him back together, even if it wasn't in exactly the right order, and if he'd allowed that whisper to persist then there really would have been nothing left for him. It had been more a matter of emotion than ratio – and that's where Sherlock would have laughed at him, probably – after a while, Sherlock had _felt_dead. Truly, utterly.

He cried quite a bit after he'd got back to his own flat, leaving a worried Mary with inane reassurances, and then in the end with one truth: _I need to be alone for a bit_. And then he spent some time being weirdly upset with himself. He'd never been a crier – even in Afghanistan it had only happened a handful of times, usually under a blanket in the depth of night, silent, or hovering over a corpse of someone he knew, a couple of seconds of emotional upheaval before he had to move on, and act, and just _do something already _– and it had taken him six months to cry again after that first, stunted, suppressed time at Sherlock's gravestone. It had taken six months as well as Ian, still a new friend, still someone who didn't know him all that well, punching him in the mouth as he insulted him about his sentimentality about his own grief in a moment of complete and utter insanity. And then the dams had broken and he'd spent some weeks doing almost nothing else, feeling more and more like he was emptying on the inside. It had felt right for a bit, expressing emotion that was enough for him and Sherlock both, but now Sherlock was back, and he wanted... He didn't know. To not cry. Sherlock very likely wasn't.

He hadn't imagined, never, not once, that he would wish that Sherlock hadn't come back, but it happened, because unimaginable things happen all the time, and then they're just another part of reality.

–

Sherlock sent him a text that evening, 24 hours after they had said goodbye on the porch of the Chinese restaurant almost to the minute, and John wondered if that was intentional, if Sherlock had maybe been counting down the hours – just like he had been – maybe waiting for a weird sort of distance to have formed itself, that made it acceptable to show himself again.

_221B available if you're interested.  
SH_

And God, yes, he was interested, almost in spite of himself, and his heart jumped, and he couldn't believe it, _was this even real_, and he didn't even curse at his current landlord when he said he still had to pay the entire contract's worth of rent. The trembling unease laced with a cold fear that had gripped him all day disappeared so quickly it seemed as though he had imagined it, because how could he want this to not happen, how? Even if it made him feel like an uprooted sapling being tossed around in a hurricane.

Mary said she'd help him move, but he refused – both because it didn't seem fair that she should help him move in with someone else, and also because he really couldn't have her meeting Sherlock yet, it would be too unsettling, it would destroy the tangible hold he'd regained over Sherlock in the past day, a hold that still felt like it was mostly air.

He packed up his stuff with the lack of ritual that was a ritual in itself, and forced himself to not feel too much like a man walking a path that had been picked out for him; the bits that he remembered from his classical schooling forced _Orpheus_on him, unbidden, but he refused to feel like he'd brought someone back, because Sherlock was no Eurydice accepting the final judgment, he had, in fact, scaled the wall that separated the living from the dying – so no, he wouldn't let it get near him, this feeling of mythology that he had at unexpected moments, because he was no artist, he was nothing, he'd just been on the receiving end of something that was bound to happen at least once in a universe that was made out of probability. He looked at the Britannia pillow he'd saved from Baker Street and that had resided on his new couch after he'd regained the ability to look at it and not want to tear it to shreds, and decided almost impulsively to throw it out; not a sort of cleansing ritual, but an assertion of his own will, the tenuous re-taking of some semblance of control.

Five days later, that had been punctuated by one text a day from Sherlock – short, practical messages that seemed to him to almost hum with things unsaid, he was back at Baker Street, arriving before his stuff did. He still had his old key, and spent a moment looking at it on the porch. He didn't ring the bell – it seemed important that he took this step himself, and reacquainted himself with the flat as its inhabitant, not a visitor, and went up the stairs, trying to believe it was happening. Sherlock had been living there for two days already, and it felt like that first time, when he had stepped through the door and had seen a mess that he hadn't known was Sherlock's, and they had talked at each other like they were both walls of text, bouncing off each other. He knew that it was Sherlock's mess now. He felt a disorienting kind of tenderness when Sherlock was surprised to see him and hurriedly cleared off some of the paper on the table, just like he'd done that first time, as he stuttered out an uncharacteristically uncomposed hello. As though he couldn't be sure that John wouldn't turn around again and leave, and find another flat, another flatmate, someone not crazy for a change, someone who hadn't been dead for two years, someone who hadn't jumped; turn around and go back to the life he had had a week ago. As if that were in any way possible. As if Sherlock didn't make that utterly, utterly impossible just by being there.

Sherlock's smile, as his surprise melted into what seemed like happiness, was wider than usual, and a bit disbelieving. They grinned at each other for a moment that would have been far too long with anyone else, but somehow was just right. All around them the flat pressed at them, new air, maybe, new furniture, but Sherlock was standing there like he'd done so many times, and he looked as if he had been sculpted lovingly into the space he was occupying now, as though it was created for him, as though he was at home.

Sherlock said: "The previous tenant was suddenly quite urgently expected elsewhere."

And John shouldn't have laughed, but he did.

–

Mrs. Hudson was almost incoherent with joy to have them both there again, and she sniffled into his hug.

"Oh dear," she whispered, "I'm being so silly, so silly!"

"It's all right," he said, smiling. And it was.

–

Although it really wasn't, of course.

"So?" John prompted him, feeling unpleasantly exhilarated for no real reason, as though he'd just scaled a lot of stairs only to find nothing at the top. A metaphor for his life if there ever was any. Sherlock was sitting on their couch, the one that Mrs. Hudson had stored in 221C, as though she'd known they'd be coming back. He was curled over his laptop – it was his old one, the one that John remembered, though it looked badly battered.

Sherlock jerked, uncharacteristically. It was something that John had noticed already, after only a couple of hours back with him. "What?"

John bit down on a twinge of annoyance. He had been afraid Sherlock would have changed, and, well, he had – there were things that John noticed, that were different about him, small ways of moving, of looking, small, protective jerks of his body that suggested that he'd been in a constant state of guardedness for a long time, and John knew that it would be a long time before he would know how or what or why, if he'd ever get to know at all – but he certainly needn't have been afraid of Sherlock suddenly being sensitive to social cues or anything. "Are we going to talk?"

"About?"

"About _you_, you twit."

Sherlock looked up at that, his face surprisingly expressive – a frown, a clenching of his jaw. John noticed that the small, new scar over his eye moved when he frowned. "I'm here," he simply said.

There was an unexpected rush of tenderness in John's chest at that, and he stepped closer to Sherlock involuntarily, hands jolting forward on their own accord. It was a good thing that he was standing across the living room or he might have trapped Sherlock in an unprepared-for hug.

"You are. You're here," he echoed, and for a second that almost seemed enough of an explanation for all of it.

But a second later, it wasn't anymore, and he realised Sherlock still had that knack of surprising him so much he almost didn't remember what it was he had wanted to say.

"But you _weren't _here for two years, Sherlock." He couldn't quite stop his voice from cracking a bit on Sherlock's name. Sherlock's name, that he'd been saying to no one for the longest time, and that could finally be picked up again by its addressee. He needed it to be picked up.

Sherlock closed his laptop with a slow sort of precision, eyes once more averted. "John," he returned, voice even lower than usual, "it's finally over. Can it be over for a while?" It was about as close as Sherlock ever came to saying _please_.

John felt something squirming in his stomach. "No," he blurted out, then reined himself in. "I mean. Sherlock. You don't have to tell me all of it in one go. But –"

Sherlock looked sideways at him, and his face was blank. He was wearing his mask again.

"No. You can't do that to me," John's sentence switched direction at Sherlock's look, almost without his own knowledge. "You can't shut me out of this. Don't do that."

"I asked you to come back here," Sherlock said, and the statement was so flat John took another step towards him, as though a decreased space between them could coax life back onto Sherlock's face.

"Why?"

Sherlock looked at him with that look; it was the first time he'd had it directed at him in two years. It was the look that said _Christ, John, you know. And if you don't, you don't deserve to_. But he did deserve to, and he deserved to hear it.

"Why?" he pressed.

"Do you really need me to tell you that?" Sherlock gritted out, and something broke inside John, and he took another step closer, hands balled into fists.

"Yes," he spat out, anger unfurling its tendrils in his chest. "Yes, I fucking do, Sherlock. And you know why? Because you haven't told me _anything_ for two years. Because I've been out of the loop of everything. You knew I was alive. But I didn't know you were alive. I thought you were fucking _dead_, you arsehole. I thought you were dead. I had my hand on your wrist, and I felt that you had _no pulse_. I saw blood running from your cracked skull. I saw that, Sherlock. I need you to tell me everything, every single fucking thing, Sherlock, so I can start maybe thinking about forgiving you." He'd managed not to shout. Still, Sherlock looked as though he'd been shot.

He held Sherlock's gaze until Sherlock dropped his eyes, and it felt wrong to think of that as a small victory, but John still did.

Sherlock said without looking at him: "Moriarty has never had feelings for anyone. I have." And then he did look at John, unexpectedly, eyes flashing brightly. "He picked that up, of course, no matter how I tried to hide it. He was going to kill everyone that meant something to me. Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson." He blinked, twice, a rare gesture of uncertainty. "And _you_, John. If I didn't jump. Do you remember that I asked you to stay put?"

And John nodded automatically, swallowing. Like he would ever be able to forget ever again. _Keep your eyes fixed on me, please, will you do this for me._

"There was a sniper there. I don't know where. I tracked him down afterwards, though." Sherlock's face blanked again. "He's dead now."

_God. Tracked him down. Killed him._ "How did you... How did you _know_about all that, Sherlock?"

Sherlock sighed, ran a hand through his curls. "He gave me clues. A lot of clues. So many that I still missed a lot of them, and picked some up that were false leads. But I knew it would be a fall... And I tried to beat him to the punch. I invited him to that rooftop."

"Shit," John silently swore.

"Yes," Sherlock agreed. Then, suddenly, he scowled, as though angry with John for forcing this out of him, and brushed past him, long-limbed, lanky, _there_. And then _not there_.

"Wait," John threw after him, but he was gone, closing the door of his bedroom behind him with a dry, controlled click.

John's heart continued racing for far too long to be healthy. He tried to fit the different parts of the conversation together for a while, but they resisted each other, pressurised each other at exactly the wrong points, like tectonic plates struggling to find a point of balance. He gave up, deciding that they'd been talking in different directions, throwing words at each other without even seeing each other, just hoping they'd reach their target. They would need to refine their aim if this was going to work. He'd clearly lost some of the finesse he had developed in talking to Sherlock – _I was too pushy_, he told himself a bit sourly – and Sherlock seemed to have lost even more of his conversation-holding skills.

It wasn't really all right, the silence in the flat. It was almost like Sherlock was gone again.

–

His first night back at Baker Street was extremely strange, laced with dreams of Sherlock's death, as though his mind hadn't quite caught up yet, and there were moments of panic in which he wasn't sure whether Sherlock was really alive, and his sleep was full of interruptions that woke him up but that he couldn't trace to anything real. To say he slept fitfully was an understatement, and when his alarm went off, he felt like he'd spent an eternity between those clammy, too-hot sheets.

When he opened the door, he was startled to find Sherlock sitting on the floor next to it, half-asleep, jerked harshly awake by the opening of the door.

"Christ, Sherlock," John said, to his knees in an instant, instinctively. "What are you doing here?"

Sherlock's eyes fixed on him a bit too slowly. John looked at him, then said: "How long have you been awake?"

"Eighty hours," Sherlock murmured. God. John kicked himself mentally for not having seen it the day before; but Sherlock looked different anyhow, more pointed, with deeper shadows, and he didn't know yet what of it was the past two years and what of it was just recent mania.

"Why are you out here?" John's hand found its way to Sherlock's knee.

Sherlock closed his eyes, then opened them again. "Just... making sure," he whispered.

"What, that I don't leave in the night?"

Sherlock only looked at him, eyes slightly glassy. John felt a stab of realisation that that had probably been it, indeed.

"C'mere," John said, and with difficulty tugged him up by the armpits. Sherlock was only marginally cooperative, and it took John a couple of minutes to get him to the couch.

"You need to sleep. We'll talk when I get back," John told his prostrate form, and pulled the blanket over him.

"You have to come back, John, you have to!" Sherlock called after him, already half in the clutches of sleep.

"Don't worry," John said back from on the stairs, something warm flooding his stomach.

–

John received his first text from Mycroft Holmes in almost sixteen months that afternoon.

_Sherlock's evidence about James  
Moriarty incorporated into the  
case. Public pardoning forthcoming.  
Let my people handle the press.  
MH_

and though the content of the text made him happy quite in spite of himself, John stared at the message angrily for a while, because Mycroft was just as big of a wanker as Sherlock was, but he didn't love Mycroft, and it was much easier to be angry at him.

_Why are you texting me?_

he sent, willing for Mycroft to pick up the silent fury that he was sending along with it.

_Sherlock's gone to exceptional  
measures to protect his new number.  
Insufficient, of course, but I don't  
want to invade his privacy at this time.  
MH_

John almost broke through the skin of his cheek as he chewed on it. Christ, he'd forgotten just how much of an infuriating bastard Mycroft was, just stepping in smoothly as though there hadn't been a confrontation between them at Sherlock's funeral that had ended with Mycroft's nose bleeding and John's hand smarting in an unbelievably satisfying way, as though there hadn't been complete radio-silence between them for almost two years. Just picking up John again, with nothing of an _I apologise_ or even any kind of inquiry into how John was, who John was, just fitting John back into the slot that had been his when Sherlock had been alive, without bothering to ask if that's where John wanted to be – but, well, Mycroft was a Holmes through and through, and never did dance to the tune of social convention.

_I'm not your puppet, Mycroft._

The answer was swift.

_I know, Dr. Watson.  
MH_

and then, like an afterthought:

_Maybe you shouldn't let him see  
the papers. Might get over-excited.  
MH_

and he gave up, because he supposed that that was as close to an apology he was ever going to get from Mycroft Holmes, and instead tried very hard to focus on the patient file in front of him, and tried very hard to not rip it to shreds. The anger was bounding about in his veins. He eventually settled for throwing his phone across the room, and that didn't really help, at all.

–

When he got home from his shift, Sherlock was still sleeping, face wearing a dark frown in his sleep. It was still a shock to see him lying there.

John observed him for a while, tracing the life shifting in him as he twisted in his sleep, obviously in the throes of a nightmare, his mouth curling and uncurling around sounds that didn't quite come together into words. And John sat, sipping tea, trying to will away the helpless feeling that everything was coming at him with the speed of a freight train, and he was heading to a cliff with absolutely no idea how to slow anything down.

–

The newspapers were ecstatic, loud, gaudy, rowdy, and absolutely sickening. Grudgingly thinking that Mycroft might have a point, and out of an entirely selfish desire to keep the fragile calm between him and Sherlock intact for as long as possible, he'd told himself to try to keep the papers out of the flat for as long as possible. But Sherlock was Sherlock, of course, and when John came into the kitchen, Sherlock was already at the table, having cleared away his new microscope and stacks of paper, poring over copies of almost every daily and newspaper in Britain, and some French ones.

"Slept well?" he asked by way of good morning.

Sherlock grunted non-committally.

John came to stand next to him. "So? What do they say?"

"That I was right, and that I'm brilliant," Sherlock responded, and John heard the frown.

"That make you happy?"

Sherlock folded the _Daily Mail _closed, shielding off the big picture of himself at one of his final press conferences with Greg – not the one where he'd gotten the deerstalker, thank god. "No," he said quietly.

That was so out of character that John felt almost suspicious when he looked at that head of curls. "Why not?"

Sherlock shifted in his chair. "I don't care what anyone thinks about me."

And it was patently untrue, so John was about to argue; but something held him back, and it was the knowledge that he _didn't_ know if it was untrue, not anymore. It _had_ been untrue for the longest time. But he didn't have a clue about what it was now. He swallowed, unease pooling in his stomach.

He allowed his eye to wander over the newspapers – giddy, huge headlines, pictures of Sherlock and of himself (still strange) from two years ago, totally unapologetic with the only exception of _The Times_, which had block lettered **BRITAIN FAILS ITS HERO**, and, smaller, as though ashamed; **We were wrong**. There was a big column on the front page, an open letter that began: _Sherlock Holmes, you are a miracle_. It was a bit unsettling, how that drilled its way into John's gut as his eyes flicked over it; this sentiment, that by all rights should have been uniquely his, his and maybe a few other people's, but mostly his, splattered out over the pages of thousands of newspapers, ending up in the eyes of thousands of people. _The Daily Telegraph_ posited a solemn **MORIARTY WAS REAL**. _The Express_ screamed out a **SHERLOCK HOLMES REDEEMED**, and asked the question **London a safer place again?** _The Guardian_ asked the pertinent question **WHERE IS SHERLOCK HOLMES NOW** while _The Sun_ focused on the most important thing: **SHERLOCK HOLMES AND JOHN WATSON TO REKINDLE ROMANCE?**John snorted, and then sobered when he spotted pictures of him that were decidedly not from two years ago, judging by his sagging shoulders and the blue shine of stubble on his face. God, he'd never even noticed that he was being trailed by paparazzi. He coughed as he noticed that of all of them, Sherlock was reading that one.

"I didn't know you spoke French," he commented mildly, as he picked up _Le Monde_. The bigger picture was of Moriarty, with Sherlock's face fitted in as though they were in a staring contest. **Dénouement d'une mort et d'une guerre secrète**, the paper headlined, and it appeared to be an analysis and a reconstruction of the last two years, complete with dates and small maps. John wished he knew how to read French in more than just the stunted _je suis tu es il est _way he still had, and had a moment of queasy wonder at how much information was in here that he didn't know, and that random people in France, people who weren't sitting at the breakfast table with Sherlock, did know, now.

Sherlock was looking at him with a cocked eyebrow when he glanced at him.

"Oh, right, of course you speak French," he muttered, "you speak seven languages."

"Eight," Sherlock corrected, "I had to learn Aymara last year."

John looked at him for a moment, but he seemed engrossed in the Sun article. "Oh," he said, suppressing the desire to ask: _what for?_because it was too much of a gamble.

"Well, I've got to go," he said after a silence of a couple of minutes.

Sherlock said nothing as he walked out of the door, remained focused on that ridiculous article.

At least some things were still the same, though the heaviness in his stomach was new.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

He lingered outside the door for a bit, wondering if he had any right at all to come back here, in the light of new events. They'd all know; they all read the newspapers. He'd even got a text from Ian: _I'm happy for you, doctor sir. Ian_

John could just imagine how long he must have slaved over that text, how many times he would've erased it and started again. It was an indecision he knew well, caught between the consistent pressures of their friendship, and the consistent and exactly counterpointed pressures of their grief, that was selfish, that didn't give even the tiniest of fucks about other people's suffering.

He took a breath, and pushed the door open, feet beating a path down the familiar corridor, where the familiar solemn arrow that simply said _New Breath_ pointed him in the familiar way. It was incredible to think that he'd been here just two weeks ago, and the world had still been in a different orbit. He felt as though somehow he'd got divorced from time, had been catapulted into a warp of sorts, where gravity had been suspended and an alternate universe played itself out. _Sherlock was alive._

Most of the members were already seated – there was one new face, a young girl, with red, puffy eyes. Jeannie was talking to her in low, reassuring tones.

Ian hadn't arrived yet, but Sharon and Bill were standing over at the coffee table, leaned close together, locked in an intense conversation. He knew what they were talking about. He drew in a breath and went over to join them, a vague nausea collecting in his gut.

They fell silent when he stepped into their circle of two, and he grimaced at the swiftness with which their faces closed up.

"Please, guys," he said. He could take it from anyone, but not from them, and it reminded him a bit too much of Sherlock, that automatic tightening of faces, the wiping of the evidence of feelings.

"Hello," Sharon said after a second. He cracked a smile at that; when she was out of her depth she couldn't help but return to the general schemes of social interaction, which she'd had to relearn the hard way. The fact that he knew this about her was why he responded with a genuine "Hello".

Bill was staring at him. Then pulled a face that clearly said, _well, fuck this_. John was grateful for the truthfulness of his expression.

Sharon said, unprompted: "We're glad to hear of it, John."

He nodded, accepting the platitude, because he knew that it was true, though not the only truth by any stretch of the imagination. The truths of people who were grieving were made up out of innumerable elements, often directly opposed to each other – he knew that intimately by now. "I hope you don't mind... that I came," he said, softly.

Sharon shook her head, a bit too slowly to be wholly convincing, but not insincerely. "It's not like – it's not like it's over for you. It must be... It must be uprooting," she said, and looked pained.

He wanted to agree, he wanted to say _you have no idea_, but didn't, because it was painfully, unambiguously true: they really did have no idea, and that was the most horrible thing, the most unfair thing that he could think of. So he held his tongue.

They took their seats. Ian arrived, late, panting, and gave John a wavering smile as he took a seat almost directly opposite him. Jeannie, the moderator, looked around the group, and something sparked in her eye as it landed on John.

The new girl introduced herself with some gentle prodding from Jeannie. Roxanne. 23. _So young_. Lost her boyfriend three months ago. Referred here by her therapist. She and boyfriend were in a car crash together. Unsaid: the crash was, maybe not in reality but at least in her experience, her fault. Unsaid: she didn't feel like she deserved to live, because he had deserved to, and he hadn't. Unsaid: she was thinking about suicide. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of Sherlock, and tried not to think about himself. He was getting good at reading what people didn't say. Or at least, what people who weren't Sherlock didn't say.

Elisa told the group that she'd visited the grave of her husband, and that talking to him hadn't really helped. They chimed in with their opinions – Nella said that it had never worked for her, either, but that she had made a small kind of remembering place in her home for her sister, where she sometimes went, and that did work at times. Ian said that it had started working for him after a while, but not because he'd thought that someone could hear him, but just because it had felt good to use his voice and not have to take into account anyone else's feelings. Rob told her to keep trying, but to keep in touch with herself, and if it really didn't help, to not feel any obligation to keep visiting the grave. Jeannie seconded it, telling all of them that grief took many forms. The silence around the group was heavy. They all knew the many shapes and sizes of mourning.

Sharon fed them a story that was somewhat hopeful – her nine-year-old had come up to her a couple of days ago, and he'd made a drawing for his little brother, and they had had a really good conversation. "I took him to the grave," she said, eyes beginning to shine, "and he left the drawing there. I just... I hope it helped him." John almost involuntarily put his fingers on her arm, and she closed her hand over them in return.

Roxanne was silently crying. Rob, next to her, had a light hand on her shoulder.

Jeannie was looking at him when he looked away from Roxanne. "John," she said softly, "do you have anything to share?"

And he looked around the group, a heavy lump in his throat. It was hard to feel like he still had a right to be here. "I'm sure all of you know, already," he said, trying to sound unconcerned, and failing, of course. Elisa fidgeted, obviously uncomfortable. Most of their faces were mild, a bit guarded. Ian gave him another smile from across the circle. "Apparently I... Apparently I've done something to deserve a chance that no one ever gets," John pushed on, insides squirming, "A chance that we all dream about. I know... I know it must be hard for all of you to see this happening to me." He looked around the group. Rob was rubbing at his eyes. Sharon tightened her hand over his. "You've all been there for me in ways that I... that I honestly didn't think people could be for each other. You've let me scream. You made me stay when I wanted nothing more than to never see any of you again. You've punched me when I needed it." Ian grimaced at the reminder, and John almost laughed. "You've let me say nothing. You've let me say everything. You've let me detail gruesomely what I would like to do to Sherlock, if he weren't – if he weren't already dead." He swallowed. A headache was developing between his eyes, as though the words he was saying were pushing at him, impatient to get outside. "And now he's not dead," he finished, somewhat lamely.

Bill was peering at him from Sharon's other side. He looked a bit angry, and a bit sad, and a bit everything.

It was Jeannie who spoke first, although she seemed as unsure as the rest of them; he supposed that in her entire career as a grieving counsellor, it had never happened that someone did, in fact, return – it probably flew right into the face of all of her training, in which it had been pressed upon her that she gently had to guide people into the direction of understanding that death was insurmountable. And now, it _wasn't_. "You have a wonderful opportunity to do some of the things that you talked about now, John."

He pressed his eyes closed. Because things weren't easy, of course, but he couldn't tell them that – he couldn't say: _I know I said that if I only had the chance, I'd kiss him until we had no breath anymore, and tell him that I loved him, that I always had, and that I was sorry, so overwhelmingly sorry, that I hadn't told him before it was too late; but now he's back, and I don't think that I can, after all. _He couldn't say that to them, not to people who were all looking for the chance he had now, and who would almost certainly never get it. It seemed cruel to be here, all of a sudden; he was only showing them what they could never have, he was only feeding into their futile hopes, hopes that he himself had had to struggle with for almost two years to get under control, and that had only really succumbed to him a couple of months before the impossible had happened, and they had turned out to, incomprehensibly, not be futile.

Sharon seemed to sense some of his anguish. "Don't you dare feel guilty," she told him. "You've done enough of that."

He nodded, grateful, though it didn't really help that much in any real sense, and felt the hot press of tears behind his eyelids.

"You've regained what we all lost," Bill muttered from next to Sharon, "Time. Time to fill. Time to use." He fixed John with a familiar, heated look. The _don't you dare fuck it up _remained unsaid.

Ian said in his soft voice: "You know all about the pressures of moving on. All of us do." There was a small pause in which John supposed he was looking at the assembled group of people, small people, bundles of human, too-fragile, weighed down by so many different stones. "And now I guess you'll know about the pressures of moving back in, or something. None of us know about that. But we've always tried to be a group that was understanding of other people's... development. You need to do this the way you want to, the way you can."

Ian was actually quite a wonderful human being, John realised with a calm clarity.

"You all mean a lot to me," he choked out, and though the tears felt like traitors, he didn't stop them.

Nobody flinched. They were all used to grown men and women crying like babies. "I hope you won't stop coming," someone said, and it was Roxanne, of all people. "You might still need it."

He thought about Sherlock, back at the flat, still not much more than a wisp of smoke between his hands, and he nodded, thinking that yes, he might.

–

Afterwards, he went out for a pint with Ian, Bill, and Sharon. The dynamic was different, somehow, and it was a bit unsettling, until Ian leaned in and said: "Hey, John, you can talk, you know."

He grimaced, acutely aware of the fact that the only thing he could really talk about at length was Sherlock, because it was so consuming, this mess of feelings, so confusing, this jumble of relief, happiness, anger and helplessness.

"Have you fought with him yet?" Sharon asked, would-be casually, picking at the olive in her martini.

"Not really," he said after a small pause.

"You should," she simply said.

He took a big gulp of his pint, trying to think of anything to say to that. In the end, he chose honesty, because they had always chosen it, too, when he'd needed it. "I don't know how to."

"He's not a corpse anymore," Bill said gruffly. "He can take it again now."

They all flinched at that, even Bill himself.

"I don't... I don't want to break the tentative peace, I guess," John said.

Ian was studying him. "How angry are you, John?"

He looked back for a long moment. "When I'm not with him, furious," he eventually said, "but when I'm with him, not at all."

"Not at all?" Sharon inquired, stirring her drink.

"Not as much," he amended, "not enough to tip me over the balance."

"Peace is nice," Bill said, curling a hand around his pint. "But it's usually only a cover for more covert warfare." He looked at John through his lashes, as though challenging him. "You of all people know that."

He did, but it didn't help. He drained his pint in two big swallows. "Yes, well," he said meaninglessly, confusion pressing hard against the inside of his skull. Then: "We can talk about something else."

"Yeah, sure," Bill said, cuttingly, "we can talk about how depressed Sharon is, or how Ian's girlfriend died eighteen months ago yesterday." John had almost forgotten how direct Bill could be. He'd also forgotten how much that helped, sometimes. Sharon gave a grim smile, Ian's face was stony. "So yeah, sure, we can talk about how pathetic we all are," Bill continued. "I can tell you how I felt when I read in the newspapers that you got your best friend back, while mine is still worm food. I can tell you how hard it was to get out of bed this morning. We can rate it, on a scale from one to ten, if you want." He brought his glass to his lips, looking undisturbed.

John said, sincerely: "Prick."

"Don't I know it," Bill said, saluting them with his half-empty glass.

And somehow, it helped. Irrationally, stupidly, it helped.

_I can't let this go to waste_, he thought to himself, in the kind of private revelation that was like a small birth, as he looked at them, hovering between laughing and crying, prisoners in their body, trying to fight the press and pull of a life that had handed them nothing but indifference.

–

The next day, he googled _Aymara _in a lull between patients, and then tried to imagine Sherlock in the Andes. He got as far as the image of him in traditional Bolivian dress, and had the dual, confusing sensation of wanting to laugh very hard and wanting to have been there so much.

–

Molly visited three days later.

When she came in and Sherlock took her coat, silently, John already knew. Sherlock never took anyone's coat. Sherlock never looked at anyone with such a solemnity. He'd never been silent before when Molly walked through a door.

He allowed her to get through some small talk – insipid "Wow, it looks totally the same as before!" and totally useless "How have you been, Sherlock?" to which Sherlock didn't actually offer anything, of course. But then she looked at John, and she must have picked up in his face that he was boiling inside.

"John, I –" she managed to say before he cut her off by putting his hand up; it was as simple as that, she wasn't Sherlock, she was stopped in her tracks so much more easily.

"No," he managed to get out, before his throat closed up.

"Yes," Sherlock hummed, hovering by Molly's side, almost protectively.

He turned to Sherlock, a deep, black rage igniting inside him. "Molly," he pushed out, "please leave."

"John," she said, startled, hands flapping like tiny birds.

"Please leave," he restated, the words pushing at his teeth – because he remembered Sharon, he remembered Bill; and Molly wasn't the one who needed to get this from him.

"I'll text you," Sherlock called after her quickly retreating form, not taking his eyes off John, who was trembling.

"Well?" Sherlock said when the front door had closed, frowning deeply.

"How is it," he began, then needed a second before he could continue, "how is it that _Molly_ got to know, and I _didn't_?"

Sherlock looked surprised. "She wasn't in any risk. You were."

"Don't give me that bollocks," John bristled, and he stepped closer to Sherlock involuntarily, jabbing a finger against his chest. "You are _perfectly capable_ of getting information to me without anyone knowing. Hell, Molly visited me almost weekly! You could have easily had her tell me! And out of some kind of – twisted loyalty for you, she – I don't know how you got her to do it – but _Jesus, Sherlock_, you threw me down a fucking pit of despair, do you know that?" His finger was pushing into Sherlock, it was bound to hurt, but Sherlock didn't flinch. "Do you _know_ that? Do you know how long it took me to become half-way functioning again? You – you told me that everything that I thought was – was real, _wasn't_, you pulled the rug from underneath me so many times I didn't know which way was up, you utter _wanker_! You made me doubt you, you know that? You made me doubt _everything_. You rang me on my phone and fucking told me that _everything, everything_ – was wrong, my whole life, me, you, and I – God! How didn't I deserve your trust, Sherlock, _how_? How does Molly fucking Hooper get to know, and I don't?"

Sherlock's pale face was stricken, inflamed with an unfamiliar flush. He didn't look angry, he didn't really look like anything.

"I did it for you," he said once John had run out of words.

"Oh, yeah, thanks a lot, Sherlock! Thanks for that, really, much obliged." John pulled his hand back from Sherlock's chest, and wheeled around, needing suddenly to put more distance between them.

Sherlock's hand on his shoulder pulled him back in, turned him around to get them face to face again. "I did it for you," he repeated, "all of it."

"What the fuck does that even _mean_, Sherlock?" Angry tears were pressing at his eyes, hot, embarrassing.

"It means I –" he was scrabbling for words, eyes casting around wildly.

"_What_?" John pressed.

"I couldn't have you knowing," Sherlock finally said, too-rapidly. "I couldn't bear to have you here, knowing that I was alive, and not being able to contact me. It was too much to bear."

John stared at him, jaw working in what he was sure was a very stupid way. "Too much to _bear_? It was too much to bear for you to have me know that you were alive? What?"

Sherlock's hand on his shoulder tightened, painfully. "I thought if I... If I just left you alone for long enough, you'd move on, and you wouldn't have to be... in danger anymore. A clean break, John."

John's brain had defused somewhere along the way. There was nothing coherent in the world anymore. "A clean break," he echoed, tonelessly.

"So you could... you could move on," Sherlock said, the mask slipping quite spectacularly, and his face almost crumpled with misery. "If you knew I was alive, you wouldn't be able to... You'd want to..." He was at an uncharacteristic loss for words.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" John spat. "Really, Sherlock, are you pulling my leg?"

Sherlock let out a long breath. "No," he said then.

There was a silence that was somehow still heavy with the sound of their voices.

"Then why are you back here?" John said, "Why did you come back? If you wanted me to have a _clean break_?"

He looked pained, his hand falling from John's shoulder heavily. "Molly. I couldn't help but involve her. She was part of the ruse. She – she kept me up to date. She told me... She told me how hard you were taking it. At first, I though it was just the first shock, but she kept telling me these things, and it just kept on coming, and I guess I..."

"You guess you realised that I actually cared about you," John filled in, feeling his face twist. "You _fucker_."

"I realised how much." He leaned back against the wall, as though he needed the support. "I never thought you'd be this shaken up."

"Because you're a fucking machine, that's why," John bit, and then felt a cold stab in his gut when he remembered that that was one of the last things he had said to Sherlock before his jump. He shook his head, trying to banish the thought, trying to get a grip on any of it.

Sherlock closed his eyes. "On that rooftop," he said, almost soundlessly, "I realised how much I cared about _you_. I jumped off a roof for you, John. I didn't – I honestly hadn't thought the intensity would be so mutual."

John felt like there was a fire burning in his throat. He had a peculiar sensation of otherness, as though his body wasn't his anymore.

"Fuck you," he spat, and walked past Sherlock, through the kitchen, and climbed the stairs to his bedroom two at a time.

–

After about an hour, an hour that he spent fuming, then pacing, then simply dazed – there was a knock on his door.

He closed his eyes. Sherlock never knocked. There was so much wrong with all of this.

But he was here now, so it'd have to do. "Come in," he said, voice dark with hoarseness.

Sherlock opened the door with uncharacteristic carefulness and poked his head in; and that _face_, those _eyes_, his lank curls sweeping his forehead – John felt again like the past was playing a cruel joke on him, opening up a window of time and space that was illusory, that would pass, because how could it not, how could it be real?

"Well, come in then," he said, a bit too forcefully. Sherlock slipped in, and leaned back against the door.

There was a long silence. John felt his anger retreating bit by bit, defused by the sight of Sherlock, folded back on himself, a crumpled ball of lankiness, of limbs that seemed to have outgrown him, gripping at the door. His face was a palette of – of fear, mostly, and that was so unfamiliar it made John's insides twist.

"You regret coming back here," Sherlock said, and the usual tone of observation was just the tiniest bit inflected by what John saw playing out on his face.

He considered. "Yes," he then admitted, because what was the use in not saying it; Sherlock knew, and maybe it would be good to say, maybe it would jolt them back to that state where they could say anything and not worry, not really. He almost couldn't remember what that was like, being able to tell Sherlock what an unbelievable tosser he was, and not having to be afraid that he'd be gone the next morning. "Not because I don't want to be here," he added, as Sherlock closed his eyes. "But... Maybe it's too early, Sherlock."

"It's my fault," Sherlock muttered, his voice low and dark. John didn't quite know what to make of that. His fault for dying? His fault for not dying? His fault for not communicating? His fault for approaching John? His fault for asking John to come back here almost immediately? His fault for being so enticing, so entirely Sherlock, that John hadn't been able to help it, and had had to come back here in spite of every other thing in his life?

"Well, fuck you," he said, conversationally. "I'm actually still responsible for my own actions, despite what you may think in your heroic saving-everyone-mode."

Sherlock looked doubtful.

"Look," John said with a sigh, "I came back because I wanted to. I couldn't rationalise it, but I wanted to. You... I've missed this. You can't imagine how much." He amended, seeing Sherlock's face: "Or maybe you can, whatever. It's not... I feel like I don't know anything about you anymore."

"You do, though," Sherlock spoke quietly.

"Not about what you've been going through," John insisted.

"Why does that matter so much to you?" Sherlock asked, sounding as though he genuinely didn't understand.

John rolled his eyes. "You have the emotional subtlety of a petri dish sometimes, you know that? Because you've _changed_. Maybe you don't know it, but you have." He was silent for a moment, then decided to spit it out, because that's what they would have to do, if this was going to work. "I feel like I have no grip on you. Like you're going to slip away again at any time if I'm not careful. It's... unsettling."

Sherlock unstuck himself from the door and closed the gap between them. He slowly, purposefully took John's hand from where it was hanging uselessly by his side and pulled it up, guiding it to his shoulder. He closed John's hand over the curve where his shoulder melted into his neck and pressed the fingers in with his own hand. He looked uncertain, awkward, but the gesture made something in John uncurl and melt – _you do have a grip on me_.

"I keep thinking that you'll be gone too," Sherlock finally said, mouth twisting as though it was an enormous effort to shape the words. "I keep expecting it."

John looked at him. "As though _I_ would ever go away," he said, still a bit snippy, then softened at Sherlock's face. "You're the biggest idiot on this planet, do you know that?" he finally said, unable to keep a bit of wonder creeping into his voice. "You only realised how much you mean to me when you get news of how upset I was when you died? Seriously? You're messed up."

"I know," Sherlock said. He closed his eyes, and there was a sound that might have been a small laugh. "I do know that, John."

John felt cold and warm at the same time. He moved forward until his nose was pressing against Sherlock's shoulder. "You tosser," he said, and tentatively put the hand that wasn't attached to Sherlock on the other side of him, sliding his fingers carefully around to his back. Without a second's pause, with a stronger intensity than John was expecting, Sherlock pulled him in and threaded his long arms around him.

–

"Just explain to me the technical details," John pressed.

Molly looked a bit uncertain.

"God, Molly," John burst out, unable to contain his impatience, "he's back. He doesn't need your protection anymore. Just tell me _how_."

She still looked doubtful, as though she felt that maybe Sherlock did still need her protection somehow. It made him so angry again, so angry, just to see her debate whether she should tell him something that she had known all this time and he should by any count have known _too_. It wasn't her fault, though, he told himself, trying to convince himself.

"Please, Molly," he ground out.

She looked pained. "He... Well, I prepared his – his body. It was actually..." She sighed. "It was actually a huge risk. Such a huge risk. It was insane, really. He was so lucky for it have worked. He said that even the fifty per cent chance that it would work was worth it. But it wasn't... It wasn't even fifty per cent, if I'm honest. I didn't want to at first, but he... he convinced me." John felt his stomach revolt inside him as she seemed to make up her mind and spoke more rapidly. "I made incisions on him, then stitched them close so they'd open on – on impact." She swallowed, avoiding his eye. "He padded his coat, and was wearing this spine stabilising thing that he'd made... Brilliant, that. I still don't understand how he made it work. And he'd injected himself with lots of stuff, to speed up blood coagulation, to lower his blood pressure, to heighten adrenaline while still keeping his pulse to an absolute minimum, the lot. Didn't want any pain killers until after, though." She hiccoughed a small laugh, shaking her head. "Said it would cloud his mind."

John stood there for a moment, trying to process it. "So he... He _actually_ jumped off the roof? It was him?" His throat was dry.

"Yes," she said. "He was... a mess. He was pretty much broken. There were only about a dozen bones in his body that weren't fractured or injured, and his skull was one of them, and that was all he had hoped for." Tears were shining in her eyes, and John's anger evaporated at the sight of them – what a terrible, terrible thing to ask of her, and what an extraordinary person she was to have done it.

"Christ," he said, feeling ill.

She nodded, trying to blink the tears away.

"And then what?"

"He'd had transport arranged. Homeless people. He'd told me that they'd come to pick him up and take him away to a safe place to recover, and then he'd really be off. I only barely managed to set all of his bones and drug him before they were here. He didn't want to me to know where he was going, said it wasn't safe; _he_ would contact _me_."

"Did he?"

"Eventually, yes. About seven weeks after. Post card from Helsinki. It was blank, but it had to be from him."

Helsinki. Not just South America, then. John took a breath, trying to get his stomach to calm down.

"John," Molly sniffed, "I just – I'm sorry. You have no idea how hard it was to have to watch you, while I knew –"

"It's okay, Molly," he cut her off gently, his anger folding over into tenderness surprisingly easily at the evidence of her anguish, at the realisation that there had been other people hurting, too. "It's over now."

She smiled at him through the tears, and he had to restrain himself to not hug her.

–

When he came home, Sherlock was standing by the window, tapping his violin bow against his temple, edges a bit blurred in the unexpected sunlight of the early spring day filtering through the glass.

John spent some moments looking at him, at the diffuseness of him in the glare of sun, and felt a hot surge of protectiveness that he didn't quite know what to do with, because Sherlock was about the most un-protectable person to ever grace the planet.

"Something wrong, John?" Sherlock hummed without turning around, sounding calm.

"No," John said, because it would hardly do to say _I just kind of feel like I want to attach myself to you and keep your body safe after all that it's been through, because I've never quite appreciated how important it is to me that you are intact in as many senses as you can still manage after everything that's happened_. Language breaking off, choking on the width of reality. But he couldn't tear his eyes away for another second, as though he needed his senses to accept that this body was still here, probably scarred now under the light lines of Sherlock's sharp dressing, maybe with slight deformations that marked the spots, x and x and x, here and here and here, where he'd broken, where the ground had tried very hard to squeeze the life out of him, a hostile essence rushing up to meet him, utterly unconcerned.

Something prickled in the back of John's throat.

He turned around and went into the kitchen, opened the cupboard and looked for a clean teacup, trying to keep control of his breathing.

Sherlock appeared behind him, unexpectedly, and reached past him, brushing his torso against John's back in a rush of sudden, warm, light contact. "Here," he said, and pulled out a cup that was too high up for John to reach.

John took it, and then had to take a moment to recover, because God, he was going to have a heart attack one of these days.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Greg looked distinctly uncomfortable as John picked his way to him through the rowdy hen's party crowd in their usual pub. The young women were loud and well on their way to drunk, dressed in tasteless dresses and pink boas. John loved it in spite of himself. It was nice to hear normal sounds again, people getting drunk, hitting on others, laughing, pushing at their boundaries just for now, to be forgotten again when their senses were back in place.

Greg gave him a smile as he sat down and passed him his pint, but it was forced.

"What's up?" John asked casually, observing the too-tight curl of Greg's fingers around his glass.

Greg tipped his pint back, taking a big gulp. Then he fixed him with his stare, less mellow than usual. "John, I can't help it, but I want to talk to Sherlock."

John eyed him, a bit confused and taken aback by the directness with which Greg addressed Sherlock. "Well, why shouldn't you?"

"Because he hasn't contacted me. At all." Greg took another big sip. "I only know from the papers."

"Oh," John said, and he frowned, guilt sparking in his gut – he hadn't thought about contacting Greg, either. It had completely slipped his mind, consumed as it had been with Sherlock.

"That's okay," Greg said, waving away his unspoken thought. Greg was a lot more perceptive than he sometimes let on. "Not your place. Besides..." He laughed, slightly nervously, "I can imagine it's been quite the roller coaster."

John drank some of his beer to try to deflect the attention from the answer, but when he put it back down, he thought: oh, why not. If anyone, Greg was a prime choice as a listener. "You can't even imagine," he said, slowly.

"Did you hit him?" Greg asked, a smile playing around his mouth, looking a bit more relaxed already.

John shook his head. "Wanted to, though. Badly. But then he was him, and you know him."

"I do," Greg nodded, "though in most people that would only encourage the hitting."

John chuckled, and felt himself unwinding bit by bit. It felt good to sit there opposite Greg, and talk for a bit, and be allowed to be normal, and also be allowed to not be normal, because nothing was normal, and Greg understood that. "In me it only encourages the confusion," he said, honestly.

Greg nodded, still smiling. He really did know more than he let on sometimes. "So you've moved back in together?" he asked, would-be casually.

"Yeah." He didn't even ask how Greg knew about that. "Maybe not that good an idea."

"No?" The nice thing about Greg was that he always prodded at the right times, and then let the silence linger for just long enough so John could decide how much he wanted to offer up to him.

"It's nerve-wracking," he eventually said. "I keep thinking I'll wake up and he'll be gone again. Even after two weeks –"

"Two weeks is nothing, though," Greg cut in calmly, "after two years."

John cradled his beer. "I guess not," he admitted.

"And how... how's Mary feeling about it?" Greg asked. His eyes were shrewd.

John cleared his throat. "She's... She's all right."

"Does she understand any of it?"

John rolled his eyes. "How can anyone... How could anyone who didn't know him understand?"

"Yeah, that's true, isn't it," Greg nodded, and John felt a rush of powerful relief that Greg was here, because Greg did understand; Greg did know Sherlock, better than even Sherlock seemed to know, and he also knew John better than John sometimes thought he did. Greg hesitated for a moment. "How much does she..."

_How much does she know?_Does she know about what you were? Does she know that you had almost merged near the end? Does she know that you spent every hour apart texting like love-sick teenagers? Does she know that he finished your sentences? Does she know that you came to me two weeks after his jump and you were deep in the clutches of hysteria, and you told me that you didn't know how to live anymore? Does she know that you told me that you had loved him in a way you hadn't known existed? Does she know about the extent of your regret, of your grief? Does she know how you had never had anyone who was as impossible, and as unmissable, and as important, and as crucial, and as infuriating, and as inspiring, and as breath-giving as Sherlock, and does she know that you eventually filed those feelings away, never expecting to have to open that vault again, for anyone? Does she know that while you think you love her, maybe even know you love her, you've always known it was different?

Greg was good at saying things without saying them, and John had got better at reading what people didn't say, or at least what people who weren't Sherlock didn't say.

"Some of it," John said, hands tightly gripping his glass. A minimal amount. Actually, not much at all.

Greg grimaced in sympathy, and something else. "And... Sherlock?" he asked, looking a bit pained.

John gulped. Sherlock obviously knew some of those things. But definitely not all. And there was still this chasm that he didn't know how to cross, didn't even know if he wanted to cross, if he even could. "I don't know," he said, half-truthfully.

Greg was silent for a bit. Then he said: "Does he hate me?"

John looked up at that, surprised. "Why on earth would he?"

"I broke his trust. I shouldn't have arrested him. I should've known." Greg's face was a small, very small, mirror of Sherlock's mask.

"You had no choice," John retorted, sharply. "He knows that."

Greg sighed. The hen's party women filed out of the pub, shrieking and laughing. The calm in the pub suddenly made John feel as though he was very, very exposed. Greg leaned in a bit, evidently feeling somewhat the same way, but continuing. "The thing is that I did have a choice, John. I just thought that I owed him this, to be the one who made that final step, to at least be consistent in my... attention to him. It had to be me. I had to take responsibility. And, I'll be honest, for a moment, I doubted him, you know." Greg was looking at him with barely-disguised distress. "But only for a moment. When he took you as his 'hostage', that... that was the moment when I knew that he was for real. I remember your face. And his."

John coughed. That night. It was a memory that felt brittle from over-handling, one that had inspired so much anguish in him in the years past, and was now something of a wonder, a miracle.

"I don't think he holds anything against you, Greg," he eventually said, when Greg didn't continue. "I don't know what's happened to him these past two years, but I don't think he has the energy left to hold grudges."

"I'll text him," Greg decided, and drained his glass.

"Yeah. Maybe it'll do him good. Besides," John said, raising his eyebrow, "you have just as much reason to be furious at him, you know."

Greg waved it away. "I am. I was. Fucking livid. When I read the papers, I mean. Tore the entire _Times_into scraps not larger than a penny. The fuckwit. Making me lose my job." He shook his head. "Making you suffer like that. Fucking wanker. It's – there are really no words for how angry I was."

John looked at him, smiling in spite of himself. He could imagine very well how Greg would have ripped the newspaper into bits, maybe even biting into it as well, shouting abuse at it, then swearing like a sailor at whoever it was to be unlucky enough to talk to him first. "But not anymore?" he prodded.

"Can't say for sure I won't want to shoot him in the face when I actually see him," Greg said, unconcerned, swirling around the beer in his glass, "but no, not anymore. The radio-silence actually kind of helped."

"You don't feel..." John hesitated, trying to imagine what it would be like to know that Sherlock was back and not get any message, "neglected?"

"God, no," Greg said, "if he'd come to see me I _would_ have shot him, just for not being with _you_. I really didn't have any right to him. Yet." He looked contemplative for a second, then drained his glass. "Besides, seeing it all spelled out like that made it easier for me. He didn't just up and went because he was bored, or something. He did it to save people." He laughed a little. "Of all the people to have a hero-complex, I really didn't think it would be him."

John looked at him, trying to see in his face how much he knew. None of the newspapers had stated who it was that had been targeted when Sherlock had been on the roof. Mycroft's people must have kept that particular tidbit out of the press successfully. He guessed that he himself was pretty obvious even to the most casual observer, but the others? He cleared his throat. "You were amongst the people he was trying to save, you know," he said, heart pounding at the reminder of the hugeness of what Sherlock had been trying to do.

"Sure," Greg said, "like everyone in London, I suppose?"

John shook his head, slowly. "No, he... You were specifically targeted."

Greg stilled. For a couple of moments, he said nothing. "By Moriarty?" he eventually spoke, voice neutral in that way he had that was decidedly not neutral.

"Yes. There were... His snipers were trained on three people." John swallowed, feeling for a moment as though it really wasn't his place to say this – but he had the sneaking suspicion Sherlock would never tell Greg, would rather keep it as a secret, a hidden weakness that he allowed but didn't need to share. "Me, Mrs. Hudson, and you."

There was a long, deep pause at that. Greg's eyes flitted to and fro as he tried to process it.

"Well, fuck me," he finally said. He eyed his glass, as if he was angry at it for being empty. Then he laughed, softly, resignedly. "Now I'm _definitely _not angry with him anymore."

John grimaced. "It does make it pretty hard to keep anger up for long, yes."

Greg looked at him, and smiled a faint smile that said that he understood at least a little.

"What's he been doing, anyway?" he asked after a long pause, while trying to catch the bartender's eye to get another pint.

John considered. "Nothing much. I don't know, really. He's around a lot, tinkering around on his computer. He's also out for long stretches. I don't... I think he might be just wandering around London sometimes."

Greg eyed him. "Is he all right?"

John sighed. "I think so. But who knows, Greg? It's still Sherlock."

There was a silence between them.

"How are _you_?" John asked, suddenly realising that he hadn't asked.

"Good," Greg said immediately, "I'm getting re-promoted. They want me on homicide again. Not sure yet about that. I won't just accept anything they offer me, either. I want an apology." At John's questioning look, he added: "Not to me. To Sherlock."

John nodded, happy that Greg was here, and that Greg was Greg.

–

"Sherlock?" he called into the flat, that was dark and quiet and peaceful and therefore, decidedly Sherlock-less. Or that's how it would have been, before; sometimes Sherlock was silent nowadays, finally delivering on that first promise of _sometimes I don't talk for days on end_. It was a bit new, and at times a bit unsettling.

A grunt came from inside the dark hole that was Sherlock's open bedroom door. Oh, John realised, Sherlock might have been sleeping. It _was _three in the morning. But sleeping at conventional hours had never exactly been a thing with Sherlock before.

After a minute, he went over to the open bedroom door. He was buzzing a bit with alcohol, and with Greg's words.

"Sherlock?" he repeated, a bit more softly in case Sherlock was really sleeping.

"Yes," Sherlock's voice came, gravelly and dark with sleep.

"Did I wake you?"

"Yes."

Oh. "Sorry."

"'s all right. Was having a bad dream anyway." There was a rustle of sheets as Sherlock turned over.

"Why was your door open?" Whenever Sherlock did go to bed, even if it wasn't often, he closed the door.

A slight pause. "Wanted to hear you come home."

Something was pulling at John's chest, as though there was a rope in the centre of it and someone was tugging on it. He swallowed. "What were you dreaming about?" he finally ventured, a bit uncertainly.

There was a long silence, and he had started to think that maybe Sherlock really, really didn't want to say or had maybe even dropped back into sleep, when the response came: "South America."

"Is that bad?" John's heart was beating a bit too quickly.

"Not generally. Generally South America is quite nice," Sherlock said, "but in this case, yes, bad."

John wasn't sure what to say to that. He wished desperately that Sherlock would just tell him, would just share with him the things that had happened, so he could start to identify the things that sometimes crossed over Sherlock's face. He stood there for a while, feeling a bit helpless, a bit drunk, a lot all over the place, and then started to turn around to go to his own room.

"John?" Sherlock mumbled, sounding as though he had his face half buried in his pillow.

"Yeah?"

"How's Lestrade?"

John was a bit surprised at that. "Good, I guess. They want him back on his old job."

Sherlock laughed, a soft, low sound. "I hope he makes them beg."

"I got the impression that was his intention."

"Hmm," Sherlock hummed, sounding pleased.

"You should come along next time."

Sherlock was silent. Probably making a face of disgust into his pillow at the idea of spending his evening having a drink in a plebeian, dull pub full of see-through, excruciatingly boring people.

"Well, good night," John eventually said, forcing himself to turn away from the small black hole that was Sherlock's bedroom, gently pulling at him.

"Night, John," Sherlock responded, warm, quiet, still too impossible to believe.

–

It was when Mary texted him a _Hello, strange doctor_. that he realised, with a guilty shock, that he hadn't communicated with her in almost six days. It was something that he'd promised himself he wouldn't do, but it had still happened, almost without him noticing it – Sherlock had gone back to taking up so much space, so much mental room, that a lot of other things had been pushed aside.

He hadn't expected Mary to be one of them. It made him very uncomfortable. He quickly texted back a

_Hi! So sorry, been submerged  
for a bit. Want to come up for some  
air with me tomorrow night?_

Her _Yes please. _was almost reverberating with all the things she hadn't put in.

"What's her name?" Sherlock's low baritone interrupted his thoughts.

He looked over at where his flatmate was sitting, curled up with his computer, looking slightly ridiculous wrapped up tightly in his robe, hair tousled and still drying from a shower, face even paler than usual, highlighted by the laptop's cold glare.

"How did you –" John began, then stopped himself as Sherlock glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. "No, don't tell me, please. It's, um, it's Mary."

"Going out with her tomorrow evening?" Sherlock had refocused on the screen.

"Yes," John said.

"Good."

John waited for a bit, and wasn't sure for what. Maybe for Sherlock asking him why John hadn't mentioned her yet; but John wasn't sure he'd be able to answer that with anything but a spiteful _because you don't ever mention anything from the past two years, either_ or a painfully truthful _because I can't bear to have you two meet_.

"Going well, then?" Sherlock eventually said.

John looked at the _Yes please _on the screen of his phone, feeling something unpleasant churning in his stomach. He cleared his throat. "Yeah, actually. Since you weren't around to mess it up." He'd meant it as a joke, but it didn't quite come out that way.

Sherlock looked at him for a second, flicking his eyes over John's face. But what he found there didn't prompt a response, and he turned back to the computer.

–

Mary was calm and communicative and all of the wonderful things she always was. "I need to know if you're still in this with me, John."

"I am. Of course I am," he told her, picking up her hand and kissing her knuckles one by one.

She believed him, because she wanted to, and because she loved him, and because she knew or at least wanted to believe that he loved her, too, and he willed for that to be enough and for the small bit of coldness in his chest to go away.

–

He was lying in bed with Mary. She was curled around him, sleeping deeply; their naked bodies were entwined and slightly sticky against each other – they had melted together after their session of sex into which John had done his very best to translate his continuing desire for their relationship, to their mutual satisfaction. Sex with Mary was rather wonderful, it really was.

So he was lying in bed with her, focusing with a post-sex slowness and dazedness on the slightly moist heat of her breath on his chest, on the brush of her nipples against him and on the way her leg was curled around his hip, when his phone buzzed on the night stand.

He was close enough to it to grab it; Mary didn't stir.

_Bored.  
SH_

He had to forcefully suppress the laugh bubbling up in him – Mary made a small moaning sound in her sleep as his chest shook. It was the first time Sherlock had sent him a truly non-practical night-time text since he'd returned, and it was the first time that he'd told John he was bored. It was such a simple, stupid thing and it made John feel a powerful rush of unexpected relief, like Sherlock was finally _really _back. A Sherlock who didn't get bored at two in the morning just wasn't the same person.

He got his silent laughter under control and took the bait gladly.

_I'm in bed with my girlfriend, Sherlock.  
__Find something to entertain you._

The response was swift. Sherlock was probably doing nothing else than waiting for his texts to alleviate the dreaded boredom.

_I gather you're bored too, then.  
SH_

John rolled his eyes, though the smile on his face widened into a grin.

_No. Being in bed with a sexual partner  
isn't generally regarded as boring._

His phone buzzed again a couple of seconds later.

_But my sparkling intellectual wit is still  
more interesting, judging from the speed  
of your texting. No surprise there.  
SH_

Oh yes, there it was, the bit of Sherlock that hadn't been around lately.

_She's sleeping, you nitwit. _

He found himself waiting with a pleasant nervous feeling for the next buzz.

_And you prefer texting with me to  
watching her sleep, which is, I gather,  
universally regarded as the pinnacle of  
romance. I'm flattered, John.  
SH_

John chuckled lightly, and put the phone on the bed next to him, trying to placate the happiness blooming inside him. It was too much for this hour, that should have been peaceful and sleep-filled. Instead it was Sherlock-filled. His phone buzzed again.

_John?  
SH_

Sherlock, checking if he was still there. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought of the many times in the past years that he'd wished he could just send Sherlock a _Sherlock?_, like he'd always done when Sherlock took too long to respond and he was growing worried, and there would be a _I'm fine. In a taxi. On my way. Solved the case. You took too long to get there. SH _appearing on his screen. There was so much to wonder at in this world. His phone trilled again.

_John, are you there?  
SH_

And he remembered what Sherlock had said – _I keep thinking that you'll be gone too _– and how he'd put John's hand on his shoulder after that, allowing him to touch the life thrumming inside him.

_I'm here. Not going anywhere._

He tried to imagine what Sherlock looked like right now, probably in his new robe, not quite as brilliantly blue as the last one, maybe standing by the window, maybe lying on the couch, his phone on his chest when he wasn't texting John.

_It would be awkward if you were,  
with your girlfriend in bed with you.  
SH_

John smiled. Before he could respond, Sherlock sent him a new text.

_I think I need a case, John.  
SH_

And rapidly, John typed out the:

_Oh thank God._

–

Ian texted him the day after:

_We're having a pity party dinner.  
Care to join? Tomorrow, eight, at  
Sharon's. Ian_

and because they were his friends, and because they had been the most insistent force in his life that had propelled him back into caring about other people again, and mostly because he actually, genuinely liked them, he knew he had to go. Though the 'pity party' descriptor made him feel a bit uneasy, now that things had changed so much – it was honestly like they were inviting him in for something that he by definition couldn't be part of anymore. They were all still in very different stages of grief – Sharon's boy had died a mere eight months ago, Ian's girlfriend of seven years had been dead for a bit over a year and a half, and Bill had already been in the group when John joined, so his loss had been about two years ago. Sometimes John worried about Bill, about his continued mourning that professionally he knew to be drawn-out and a bit too intense; but then he remembered himself, and how he had been for a while, a long, long while, and couldn't help but feel like a wanker for judging other people's responses to tragedy. And then of course _he_ wasn't really in any stage of grief anymore; though sometimes he had to consciously remind himself of that, and sometimes it felt like he was grieving _something_, not Sherlock anymore, because the man who was back with him was definitely Sherlock, even with the newness, the dark spots, he was still fully, completely Sherlock – but the life that they had had before, maybe, that had been just that little bit less complicated, that little bit less under pressure. Still, he was lucky, so lucky to get as much back as he had. So immensely lucky a feeling of overwhelming gratitude sometimes sprang on him unexpectedly; only a couple of days ago he'd had to stop for a moment while he was examining a patient's armpit, and he'd come close to crying, and the poor lady had thought for a moment he'd discovered a cancer lump on her.

_Sure. I'll bring the tissues. J_

he responded, and then felt grateful for Ian, who was still very much struggling, but who had a kind of macabre humour that was nowhere near as cutting as Bill's, but still quite refreshing. It was something the four of them shared – there had been times when they'd been sitting together, all flattened by their respective sorrows, all crushed, all motionless, and then Bill or Ian would make a crack that would probably have made a lot of other people in the same circumstances cry, and it had always helped. Sometimes it had made them cry and it had still helped.

"I'm going out tomorrow night," he told Sherlock, who was standing in the kitchen, inspecting the sink for some reason.

"With Mary?" he asked, sounding uninterested.

"No. Friends."

Sherlock turned towards him. "Friends?"

"I do have them," John said, somewhat annoyed. He didn't want to explain that he'd found these friends through Sherlock, indirectly, because Sherlock really didn't need any more proof that John's life revolved around him. John being there was already more than enough proof for that.

Sherlock studied him for a long moment. "Okay," he then said, lightly, and turned back to the sink. "There's an interesting mould growing in here, John."

–

"Hullo, doctor sir," Ian greeted him as he opened the door. He looked rather terrible; there were dark circles under his blue eyes, and his longish hair was lank and greasy. "Come on in. Sharon's in the kitchen and Bill's being a prick and delivering a running commentary on her CD collection."

"Nothing out of the ordinary, then," John smiled.

"Yeah, well, it is a pretty terrible collection, to be honest."

He followed Ian in; he'd been in Sharon's house once before – they tried to switch around the location of their get-togethers so none of their respective households, if any, would have to suffer four depressed people who liked to make inappropriate death jokes with too much regularity. John thought for a moment about what it would be like to have them come over to Baker Street, and if it would be in any way possible to get Sherlock to go out if there wasn't really any reason for it, apart from not making people from his grief counselling group profoundly uncomfortable by meeting, alive and kicking, the reason he'd been crying and swearing and hitting and scratching and struggling for the past two years. He doubted Sherlock would just go away if he asked. But he decided to file those thoughts away for later as he went into the kitchen.

"Oh no you don't," Sharon was saying as she was pouring a delicious-looking tomato sauce over an oven tray filled with penne, "you don't get to say anything about Boy George, you hear me. Not a single word."

"I'd off myself if I had this in my house," Bill responded, sounding offended, "not just try to, like I've done before."

Ah, John thought with a familiar cynicism, normality.

"I don't have my medical stuff with me, Bill, so do restrain yourself," he said, announcing his presence.

Bill shot him a long-suffering look as his hello, and continued leafing through the discs while Sharon gave John an oven-mittened wave and a rather under-animated smile. She didn't look great.

"I've brought wine," John said, putting the bottle on the table, "so we can get drunk and be depressed without our usual inhibitions. Also, tissues."

"You actually brought tissues?" Ian asked as he came in. "_Brilliant_."

"I was going to just order pizza," Sharon said, inspecting her work, "but then I realised that I have to pretend to be functional. So I made pasta." She popped the tray into the oven.

"It smells delicious. But you know you don't have to pretend to be functional around us," John said, taking a seat. Bill came over to the table and started uncorking the bottle.

"I'd prefer pizza anyway," he grunted, struggling with the cork, but he flashed a smile at Sharon to show her that he didn't mean it. He always softened his regular jokes somehow, without doing anything at all to take the edge of his sharper ones.

"So, how is everyone?" John said slowly as Bill filled his glass without asking him if wanted any – there was no need.

"Not great," Sharon said, frowning. John sent her a sympathetic look, which she accepted with a half-shrug. "Just really miss him," she said.

"Well, I'm absolutely spiffy," Bill said, knocking back a too-big mouthful of wine.

"Suicidal," Ian spoke quietly, a bit too quietly. They all turned to him, knowing when someone was a little more serious than just serious.

"Oh," John said, studying Ian's face.

"You can use the Boy George CD to slash your wrists – you'd be taking down a thing of horror with you," Bill said, but his eyes were focused sharply on Ian, which was his version of concerned listening.

Ian chuckled bitterly. "Yeah, that'd work."

"Did something happen?" John asked.

"Apart from Ellen dying, you mean?" Even Bill winced slightly. Ian looked unapologetic. "It's our anniversary," he finally said.

"Oh, shit," Bill said after a moment's pause. He pulled Ian's glass toward him and filled it up to the brim. "Drink it. Now," he ordered. "Doctor's orders. Because I can read John's mind and he's thinking it too." John wasn't, not really, but he had learned to leave his professionalism at the door; coping wasn't always healthy, but then it wouldn't be coping if it was. Ian slammed back the glass, tears glistening in his eyes.

Sharon reached over and put an unsteady hand on Ian's shoulder. He smiled a half-smile, lips reddened by the wine. "Last year I was just still so depressed that I almost didn't notice it was our anniversary. She'd only... She'd been dead six months." He picked at the table cloth. "I was high most of the time. Not really aware of the dates, usually." They all nodded; all of them could at least imagine what he meant. "Now, though..." He let out a deep, long breath.

"There are no words," John filled in quietly, after Ian had been silent for a bit.

"There really aren't," he agreed. John recalled all too well what anniversaries meant; on the first anniversary of the day he'd met Sherlock, a mere four months after Sherlock's jump, he'd got the most pissed he'd ever been in his life and Greg had had to physically restrain him to stop him from breaking all of the things that could possibly break in Greg's living room. It wasn't one of his proudest moments. He gulped, realising once more with a painful clarity that he had been extremely lucky that Greg had come to look for him after John hadn't responded to any of his calls that day. It hadn't even been a date that had had particular meaning to him while Sherlock had been alive, but it had got that much bigger, monstrous even, after his death. After that, Ella had told him she thought group counselling might be a good idea for him. Make some new connections. Find some people down the same rabbit hole. He remembered scoffing at it, at her, at all of it, but then after two more months going anyway, because there was literally nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, and fuck it all.

"Words are absolute shit," Bill said, earnestly. "Alcohol, though, that works." And he filled Ian's glass again. He responded to John's measured glance with a look that clearly said _to hell with that, John, he needs it right now_, and John couldn't argue.

"Food works too," Sharon said, and got up to get the penne out of the oven, "and fuck you guys if you think you're not going to eat this just because you're crying."

"We're not crying," John said.

"Yet," Sharon said pointedly.

She ladled pasta onto their plates – despite the nervous cramp in his stomach, John dug in. It was delicious; he picked that up even through his worried preoccupation.

"Ian," Sharon said, softly, "don't kill yourself. If you do, we'll kill you. Revive you, and kill you."

They all had a nervous chuckle at that. John felt his stomach twisting as Sherlock popped into his head, unbidden. _Revive you. _Ian wiped his eyes. "Yeah, I... I know. I'll try to..." John could tell that he was looking for a joke to crack, but then he seemed to give up and just said: "Just be around me for a bit."

"Mate," Bill said, "it's not like we've got anything else to do." Ian gave him a watery smile. "Though," he continued, "I do think there was this thing on the telly tonight, so maybe when you're not suicidal anymore, you can tell us, so I can get back to that." He smiled, showing his teeth, but he allowed his large hand to linger on Ian's shoulder after he clapped it on, and his fingers squeezed him for several seconds. Bill, hard-edged Bill, rough, rude Bill, letting Ian know _I'm here_.

"Can we please just watch a ridiculous action movie tonight?" Ian finally asked, after they'd eaten. He looked even younger than his 26 years.

"Only if you want me to die, too," Bill said.

"We do," John said easily, "you're a fucking arsehole, you're useless and you eat all of the food."

"In that case, bring on the machine guns." Bill said, raising his eyes to the ceiling in a mock-heroic gesture.

The movie was terrible. Ian and Bill improved it immensely by overlaying it with their own dialogue. John revisited his thought that they should form a comical duo, but then remembered that most of the audience would be traumatised by the end of any show of theirs. Sharon's husband joined them, a quiet, mousy man obviously grieving in his own right.

Before he left, as everyone was getting their coats, John went to stand with Ian for a bit, who was standing in the middle of the living room, looking lost. "Do you have somewhere to go tonight?" he asked under his breath.

Ian half-shrugged, then nodded. "I think I'm going to stay with my mum."

"Yes, do," John nodded. "We know how shit it is," he continued, quietly, "and you know in return that you can have it be shit with us. If you need me tonight, call me, all right. No matter what time it is. No offing yourself." Ian nodded, and the way he looked John straight in the eye was already reassuring. He'd got almost painfully adept at reading signs of actual danger, and it didn't seem like Ian was really desperate; just very depressed and in need of not being alone.

"Thanks," Ian said.

Sharon gave John a fleeting hug as he said goodbye to her at the door – a rare gesture of physicality. "You haven't said anything about yourself tonight," she said. She could be quite observant at times.

"Yes, well..." he evaded, then remembered who he was talking to. "Ian needed the attention tonight. Besides, you lot really don't need me talking about getting a new chance."

"God, John," she said, "we're not just all people who have lost something. We're also your _friends_. You know, people who do care sometimes about how you are."

"You're stronger than I would be," he said, and meant it. Her pale face folded into a small smile that said many different things all at once. He was struck with a sudden surge of affection for her, as she stood there, a slight, mousy woman with hair the shade of night, blending into the fabric of the evening around them. "I'm fine," he then added, because he had to offer her something, even if it was so much more complex than that. "Fine."

"All right." She seemed to accept it. "Are you coming to the session next week?"

"Dunno. It doesn't seem fair," he said, truthfully.

"Do it for the beer afterwards."

He chuckled lightly. "I can have beer with you guys whenever I want."

"Yes, you can. Whenever we're not having beer with you we're just wallowing in misery, so it's not like we'd ever say no."

And it was too true, too blunt, too real, and it was perfect. He smiled at her.

"Goodnight, John," she said, a pale, thin figure full of grief, and full of unspent love.

"Goodnight, Sharon."

–

Deep in the night, jerked awake by something he couldn't identify, he sent Ian a text: _Still alive? J_

While he waited for a response, he listened for a bit to the soft sounds of Sherlock shuffling around the flat, apparently looking for something, talking to himself mutedly, the low timbre of his voice carrying up the stairs even to his bedroom. When Ian's _Yes, doctor sir. Thanks. Ian _had fallen into his inbox, he closed his eyes and felt sleep curling itself around him as he listened to the incomprehensible, soft tones of Sherlock's deep voice coming in at the fringes of his slowing consciousness, filtering into his dreams.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Sherlock was out when he came home from his shift at the clinic at four. John spotted his violin lying on the sofa, and smiled a bit – Sherlock hadn't played anything since he'd returned, or at least not while John had been listening, but now there were composition papers scattered over the coffee table and his bow crossed over the violin that clearly suggested that he'd been playing. Good. Bit by bit, Sherlock seemed to be re-emerging.

He went to the fridge, steeling himself, but when he opened it there was nothing out of the ordinary – and not a lot that was ordinary, either. He sighed. He'd need to go to the store in the morning. He stood for a second, debating whether he should call out for some curry, but decided he couldn't be bothered if Sherlock wasn't here. He picked out some eggs that he remembered buying and was therefore relatively sure wouldn't kill him, unless Sherlock had been doing things to them.

As he stood, folding over his omelette in the pan, he couldn't help but think back to Sarah, who he'd run into for the first time since Sherlock's return due to unmatching shifts. She'd offered him a clumsy but sincere congratulations – he didn't really mind that much that people were awkward around the subject, because he couldn't imagine there was anyone out there who had a lot of social experience in saying _hey mate, glad your other mate who you thought was dead, isn't. Sorry you had such a shit time for a while_. She'd told him he looked good. He wasn't sure whether she meant it. And then there had been something in her demeanor as she said, "So now it's back to the two of you," and he knew what it was – they had parted ways because of Sherlock, in the end, just like most of his relationships had fizzled out because of Sherlock; Sherlock, who took up too much space, who stole John away from his dates, who didn't bother to remember his girlfriends' names, who was thoroughly dismissive of them. But in the end it was still really because of John, who allowed all of that, who responded to his incessant texts during dates, who said _sorry, but I need to get home _usually with only a small twinge of regret, and who easily cancelled plans at the smallest indication from Sherlock that he needed John to come on a case or for something else.

And damn him if he wasn't doing it again – he recalled his date with Mary a couple of days ago, which had been very nice, but of which he mostly remembered that he and Sherlock had texted back and forth for half an hour in the night. There was something seriously wrong with that.

He slipped the omelette onto a plate and stared at it for a bit, as though willing it to explain to him the meaning of it all. Fuck, he was well underway to _loving _Mary. He wasn't kidding himself when he told himself that. But what Sherlock meant to him was just so different from all the other relationships in his life; it was huge, suffocating at times, it was sometimes unhealthy in how it pushed other things out of the way.

It had been an easy thing to just let be while Sherlock was alive, because his mere presence gave John an energy that he had rarely felt before in his life; and despite the consistent assumptions from other people, that had been enough for him. He'd suppressed his unmistakable attraction to Sherlock surprisingly easily, explaining it away as a side-effect of the exciting life they led and the closeness they shared. In many ways it had been a relationship, anyway – there was no one else he'd ever shared a bank account with, or argued with over what to have for dinner, or waited up for when they were out. It had been enough most times, especially after he'd progressed far enough to allow himself to have sexual fantasies about Sherlock, kept so carefully under wraps he seriously didn't think Sherlock knew about them – and the fantasy was enough.

But then Sherlock had died, leaving nothing behind but the suspended gravity of a black hole.

And amidst the wreckage of his life, caught in the maelstrom of the shipwreck that had been him, John had realised that he'd lost something that hadn't reached its full potential, that could have given him more if he had just taken the leap. After the guilt, the overpowering guilt at not having _seen_, came the regret at chances not taken, and the hatred for his own cowardice. He'd shared this with Greg to some extent, almost helpless, in the senseless time just after Sherlock's death, and with Ian, Sharon and Bill to another extent. None of them knew the true scope, but they knew bits of it – and he had told all of them that if only he were to get another chance, he'd do things differently.

But it was _hard_. Sherlock was real again. He was full-bodied again, he was himself again, he had his quirks and his flaws and his own infuriating way of doing things; and John's fantasies and wishes were in the end all built on just a shadowy mirror of Sherlock, because no one could re-imagine Sherlock with all of his complexities and idiosyncrasies, not even John. It was all built on a shadow of Sherlock that did what John wanted in the deepest of his thoughts – and there was absolutely no way to be sure that the real Sherlock would do those things. It felt like too big a gamble, putting what they were slowly regaining under such pressure so soon. And there was Mary, who he honestly loved, but who, he knew with a raw stab of guilt, was getting slowly but surely overshadowed by the bright, hot glare of Sherlock, that was growing as Sherlock gradually found his way back into life.

When he finally cut into his omelette, it wasn't even warm anymore. He closed his eyes, confusion teeming inside his skull.

His phone pinged. He flicked it open. Sherlock.

_I'm having a drink with Lestrade.  
SH_

John blinked.

_Are you joking?_

Sherlock was still a fast texter; a second later the response arrived.

_I take offense at your implications  
that I'm incapable of social contact  
with Lestrade. But yes, I am joking.  
Evidently. I'm at the Yard. Case.  
Need you here.  
SH_

John shook his head at the screen, smiling, feeling a lot lighter all of a sudden.

_Did you seriously just make a crack  
about being in a pub with Greg?_

He stuffed the remainder of the omelette into his mouth, and was slipping into his jacket when his phone pinged again.

_Yes. My wit brightens your day.  
Get over here.  
SH_

God, and it made him feel alive, beating down the stairs, shouting out a goodbye to Mrs. Hudson, and hailing the first cab he saw – feeling important again, part of the Holmes-Watson team, someone who worked hard to keep these streets safe, who helped where he could. Sherlock had been a force of nature in his life, upsetting all the balances, uprooting everything in a way that made it possible to experience newness even at the age of 38, and after the fall, when he had finally emerged from the deepest depths of the bare, naked, painful missing of _Sherlock_, he'd also started missing the John that he had been with Sherlock. His life wasn't very extraordinary without Sherlock, and that was something that he had accepted without bitterness, and with a whole lot of regret. The feeling he had when sitting impatiently in the cab was like a drink of water after months – no years, two years to be exact – in the desert.

He said hi to the officer manning the front desk at the Yard, who remembered him, and gave him a broad smile. He took the stairs to the homicide department two at a time.

Sherlock was standing in the middle of the office, stoic, tall, still dressed in his coat and scarf. Greg was standing next to him, while Sally Donovan seemed to be in the middle of an exposé to the both of them, gesticulating quite wildly, and as John approached Sherlock cut her off and said coldly: "You're getting old, Donovan. The past two years seem to have destroyed even more of your brain cells, which is quite the feat." She scowled, then noticed John as he came up to them. He spared her a neutral glance, not entirely sure how to behave – the last time he'd seen her was at Sherlock's funeral, when he'd wanted very badly to shut her up somehow, because she kept saying how sorry she was for how she'd treated Sherlock over the years. At least Anderson had been consistent, and had told John: "I'm sorry, doctor Watson, even though he was a premium arsehole."

Greg smiled at him, looking a bit worn, and Sherlock looked at him for a moment as John took his place beside him, and a smile slipped across his face that seemed almost unconscious; after a second it was gone again. But his hand came up to grab at John's arm, the same way it had when they had been walking to the Chinese restaurant, the earliness, the shock of their reacquaintance roaring like a young waterfall around them. John noticed Greg's eyes flicking down to where Sherlock's fingers grasped at the seam of his sleeve, and he answered his gaze with – he wasn't even sure – surprise? Acceptance? Probably a tangible bit of happiness?

"Double murder. Looks like murder-suicide," Sherlock said to him.

"And there is no reason to assume that it _isn't_," Donovan interjected, frowning.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Except for the fact that it's _obvious _that the supposed suicide died before the supposed murdered."

"Time of death is inconclusive, Sherlock," Greg reminded him, but he was smiling slightly.

"I don't need Anderson's sloppy forensics. You just need to look at the scene to know that the man died before the woman, and that someone, either a very stupid killer or someone who didn't see how they were killed, then spent a lot of time making it look like he killed her." Sherlock's eyes were flashing.

"Show us, then," John said, and Sherlock released him and stalked over to the large board on the side of the room, where pictures of the crime scene had been pinned up.

They followed, Donovan scowling.

"So, back in homicide after all, then?" John asked Greg quietly as they made their way after Sherlock.

"Couldn't resist the siren song of gruesome death and sleepless nights," Greg responded lightly. "I missed the team. And they missed me. Got a huge raise, though. And the apology that I wanted."

"To Sherlock?"

"Yeah, didn't he tell you?"

John shook his head.

Greg shrugged. "I don't know if it meant much to him. But it did to me."

John glanced at him with a small smile as they reached the wall, where Sherlock was already talking, pointing at the scuff marks on the carpeted floor, the pattern of the blood from the man's slashed wrists – post-mortem, almost certainly, because there wasn't enough of it – and the unexplained bruises on the man that were unlikely to be the result of anything else than a clubbing with a blunt object. John allowed the familiar, tingling feeling of admiration fill the pit of his stomach as he watched Sherlock in his element, finally a flurry of activity again, face shining with insight.

–

In the taxi, Sherlock sat brooding tensely, undoubtedly running his mind over the details that still needed explaining and that would give them a lead.

"Why didn't you text me when you were at the scene?" John asked him.

Sherlock ignored him for a long minute, probably finishing a train of thought, before he said: "You were at the clinic."

It was true, but John hadn't thought Sherlock would know that, let alone consider it an impediment to come to a crime scene. "Yeah, I guess so," he said, wondering a bit.

Sherlock fixed him with a short stare. "I'll let you know next time," he said, then returned to his thoughts, brow furrowed.

London flashed by, oppressive, shimmering, teeming with life. Sherlock stared out the window.

"Sherlock?" John ventured.

Sherlock said nothing.

John pushed on. "Greg said the Yard apologised to you."

Sherlock turned to him, face curiously blank. "Yes."

"Well, who did it? What did they say?"

"Chief Superintendent Ruskin himself," Sherlock responded, profoundly unanimated. "He was disgustingly humble. I stopped listening after a while."

"Is that the wanker –"

"The one you decked, yes." Sherlock's mouth twitched in a momentary smile, before he turned back to look out the window.

John grinned to himself. "Thinking about that still gives me such joy."

Sherlock hummed non-committally, but then said: "Me too." John remembered how they'd ran together that night, linked together by their handcuffs and later their hands, needing to feel the other's presence, caught in a swell of adrenalin and fear, but profoundly, deeply, _in it together_. He coughed. He wanted to say more, but without Sherlock's face to go on, just the sharp, untelling line of his nose and cheek against the bright lights of the street, he decided not to.

–

Back at home, Sherlock paced the evening away, talking to himself in low riddles, slipping into different languages at times, mostly Spanish from what John could tell, his long hands shaping and moulding unseen things around him. It was almost, but not quite, the way he'd acted before when he was deep into a case – what was different wasn't more than just a fleeting impression of a deeper physicality, of an awareness of body that was new, that Sherlock seemed to have developed as his hands landed on himself as often as on something else, sliding his hands over his own face, touching his sides lightly. And the Spanish. The Spanish was new. It was the first time John had seen him quite so animated since his return, and at one point he went upstairs just to get away from it for a bit, to try to get the strange tightness in his chest to abate, and – yes – to get his rather unwelcome arousal under control.

"Fuck," he swore as he sank down on his bed. Leave it to Sherlock to be dead for two years and then _return_, as ridiculously and weirdly gorgeous as before, as completely arresting in his intensity, and now with a fluidity of movement, of hands, of self-centred physicality that shot straight down to John's groin. He wondered for a bit if Sherlock's new attention to his body had been prompted by the unimaginable pain he would have been in the weeks after his fall, then tried to shut off that train of thought; it was unbearable to think about. Either way, Sherlock's detached brilliance at crime scenes had always been at least a little arousing to John, but it had never been anything he couldn't control; but now Sherlock _touching himself _while thinking, a combination of complete mental focus and a bodily there-ness that had never really been there before, and God, Spanish – Spanish, sultry in itself, absolutely maddening in Sherlock's mouth, with that voice.

"God, what is my life," he muttered to himself, pressing his eyes shut. He couldn't block out Sherlock's voice – it was so low and deep it carried up to his bedroom, incomprehensible, fluid. His trousers were tight, and, cursing himself somewhat, he decided that a quick wank would be easier and faster than trying to will his erection away.

It felt... strange. Sherlock had been a rather constant source of sexual fantasy before he'd died, taking a pretty prominent place in John's collection of wank fodder, but afterward it had just become so painful, so horrible a notion to entertain that even after John had regained some of his sexual feeling (after he'd become aware of his body again, after he'd progressed naturally, almost unwillfully, to forgiving his body for still existing) he'd shied far away from his sexual fantasies about Sherlock or had at least tried to. At first it had been rather like trying very hard not to think about the fact that he was now in a new flat, alone, and Sherlock was in a cold hole in the ground – and, well, that had obviously burst through the barriers of his control with a force that had shocked him, and had often ended with him slipping from sexual arousal to a deep, dark depression that had him gripping the pillow in misery as he came with more pain than pleasure, the memory of Sherlock, grey, in a splash of crimson on pavement burned on his retina. It was another one of those things that had got better, though, and as all things around him gradually lost their monstrous knife edges and eased back into a more mundane, rounded-off reality, his sexual thoughts around Sherlock and the new sense of terrible finality surrounding them were much more easily left alone, and new things left new impressions on him, and then there was Mary, materialising like a beacon in a fog, a safe haven for his shipwreck, and that had changed things for a while.

Now, though. He shook his head at himself, at the extent of his excitement – it was almost like he was a teenager again, the way his erection was insistent, wayward, stubborn, silencing all other thoughts in his head. He undid his fly and tugged his trousers down over his hips. He closed his eyes as he slipped his hand over his cock, tugging it quickly to full mast. He reached over to his night stand, got out his bottle of lube and pulled a tissue out of a box, feeling a little ridiculous as he squirted the lotion between his palms and warmed it. But he wanked himself quickly, working his thumb over the head of his cock between sure, steady strokes, leaning back on his bed as the pleasure soon began to press in at his edges, resting his weight back on his other hand, legs spreading more widely out of their own accord. He didn't even try to force himself to think of Mary. It was obvious it wouldn't work. Because _Sherlock_. The voice coming from downstairs was a constant undercurrent, deep, thrilling John as he allowed himself to, for the first time in ages, think about the curve of Sherlock's back and the small, tantalising hint of buttock as he'd stood in his ridiculous sheet in Buckingham Palace; the maddening way he was too tall and his shirts were just that tiny bit too small, buttons straining, practically begging to be torn off; his angry stride, the steady arrogance with which he moved at crime scenes, even more arousing to John because it was so natural, Sherlock obviously being quite oblivious to how utterly delicious he looked; and now the way he'd let his hand rest on his eyes, trailing his fingers downward to his cheeks, as though trying to reassure himself that he was still there as he talked to himself in rapid Spanish; and _ohgod_; fantasy swooped in to replace memory – Sherlock turning to John and pulling him in by his collar, crushing their mouths together, hard and demanding as John imagined it would be, not gentle and sweet like with most of his girlfriends; Sherlock finally yielding up some of himself, allowing John to take over bit by bit, releasing some of the control, straining up to meet him, pale, angled, long stretches of chest and thigh and neck; saying _John_ in a new way, and _please_, so rare an occurrence in reality, _please, John_–

John came into his hand silently and intensely, biting down on the groan waiting in his throat. He crumpled in on himself with the deep pleasure of it. He drew in a shuddering breath as he came down from his high, and then allowed himself a couple of seconds to recover from what had been quite a strong orgasm – he wiped at himself with the tissue, head a bit light.

Then, as the world gradually filtered back into focus, he heard it: "John! For Christ's sake, _John_!" Sherlock's voice was urgent. On instinct, John pulled up his trousers immediately and stumbled down the stairs, fastening his zipper only just in time to appear in the kitchen.

"What is it?" he all but panted, almost expecting to see Sherlock held hostage by three armed thugs or something – but Sherlock was still just standing in the living room, facing him, hands clasped behind his back.

"Where were –" Sherlock began, then stopped himself, a vague sort of surprise sparking in his eyes as he took in John's appearance. _Fuck_, John thought to himself; Sherlock could obviously tell immediately that he'd had an orgasm not a minute ago, he'd be able to pick up the signs immediately – still sweating, breathing heavily, flushed, trousers not quite as arranged as they should be, facial muscles still a bit slack. Sherlock's eyes widened, perceptible even to John, and his mouth twitched into a smile and then bloomed into a grin. John squirmed with embarrassment.

"Look, please just don't say anything," he said.

"I wasn't going to," Sherlock said, but he looked infinitely amused.

"Yes, you were," John said, passing a hand over his face to block out Sherlock's smile for a second.

"John," Sherlock said, face rearranging itself into something resembling normalcy, "I would never dare to comment on your masturbatory habits."

John rolled his eyes. "You've dared often enough in the past."

"Yes, well," Sherlock said airily, and then uncharacteristically didn't finish the sentence. "I hadn't realised you'd left. I was talking to you, you know."

"You were talking in Spanish," John pointed out.

Sherlock looked surprised. "I was?"

"Yes. Glad to hear you noticed my absence this once, but there isn't much I can contribute if you're talking to me in a language I don't speak."

Sherlock spared him another amused look before dropping down into the couch. John was about to turn around to retreat to the safety of the kitchen when Sherlock said: "So it turns you on, does it?"

John froze. "What?" he squeaked out, the fear pounding in his gut that Sherlock's next words would be _the way I speak_ or _the way I think_ or _me speaking Spanish_ or just, simply, the most true of all, _me_.

"Being back in the game," Sherlock said, and John could almost feel his smug smile.

He coughed as he went into the kitchen. "I don't –" he started, and then quickly jumped on the opportunity: "Okay, yes, if you must know. Now, let's please return to the idea that you weren't going to say anything."

"It's perfectly healthy and normal, John," Sherlock said, voice practically reverberating with silent mirth. "And nothing I didn't know. Anyway, I can relate," he added as an afterthought, suddenly sounding quite sobered.

And _God_, that really wasn't what John needed to hear right now, the idea that Sherlock was excited _too_, in more than just a mental sense, that he also felt that rush, that heat, even if it was because of different reasons. Definitely not because of John. But still, it felt too intimate, this knowledge that Sherlock was also caught in it, in an arousal of sorts, though John had never really known to what extent Sherlock ever had physical sensations. He'd always been so dismissive of his body, but it was true that it seemed a bit less so now, as though he'd learned to appreciate it more and – no, stop, definitely not the train of thought he needed right now, just after an amazing orgasm just thinking about Sherlock looking at him with lust and invitation in his eyes. He forced himself to focus on the cupboards and started rummaging through them for some teacups.

"I'm missing something, John," Sherlock said, obviously displeased with himself, "I need you to come with me to the crime scene to have another look."

"Okay. Sure," John replied, not even jumping on the opportunity to mock Sherlock for missing a detail because he was so happy for the change of subject. "Just tell me when you want to be off."

"Finish your tea first," Sherlock said, "and have something to eat, too."

"What about you?"

"I'm fine." John could practically hear the eye roll.

"How long has it been since you've eaten?"

Sherlock offered nothing in return but silence.

"I'm fixing you some toast," John said decisively. "You and your eating. Seriously, Sherlock. It's not okay."

"I can do without food for a long time," Sherlock grumbled.

"Yeah, you and your whole _my body only holds my mind back _thing. It's bollocks and you know it. Your mind and your body aren't opposed to each other, you know. They support each other. Your brain needs food just as much as the rest of you." He flicked on the kettle and checked the sell-by date on the milk.

"It's not –" Sherlock began to argue, then seemed to reconsider. "I just forget about eating when I'm alone," he said and then made a sound that was suspiciously like a yawn.

John stilled, tea cups in hand. "You're not alone, though."

There was a small silence. "No, I guess not," Sherlock said, and he sounded as though that was a revelation he hadn't had yet.

John popped the toast in the toaster and let the tea steep. He forced himself to step into the living room instead of hiding back in the kitchen; the atmosphere between them was somewhat strange now, and there were still things that needed confronting, and maybe a moment of strangeness was exactly the right time for it.

Sherlock observed him coming to stand next to the couch with a half-raised eyebrow. John picked his words carefully, feeling a bit out of his depth. "Were you alone a lot? Before?"

Sherlock's gaze was tight, but he held it. "Evidently," Sherlock said, falling back on his favourite word. "I was supposed to be dead and hiding from a whole network of gangsters."

"So there was no one... No one you could..."

"John," Sherlock sighed, "do we really need to do this?"

John bit back his _I fucking deserve this, Sherlock_, because he'd already expressed enough of it, and maybe Sherlock also deserved something in all of this. "I'd like you to include me in it," he finally said, uncomfortably.

"I faked my death so that you wouldn't _have _to be included," Sherlock countered, and he sounded genuinely annoyed. "It wouldn't be logical to make you go through all of it by hindsight."

"Well, it's not over, you're still going through it, whether you like it or not," John said, a bit more snippily than he'd intended. "And I'm back here with you, and I don't understand any of it."

Sherlock frowned deeply. "Why isn't it enough that I did this for you? For all of you? Why is everyone still in a strop with me? After two years? After all I did to keep you safe?" He looked away from John.

John licked his lips. "You can't imagine what you put me through," he finally said.

"I can," Sherlock said quietly, not looking at him. "I went through it too."

And maybe that was true in a way, but it was also very untrue in a way, so he said: "Damn you if you think we went through the same thing, Sherlock."

Sherlock jerked around to look back at him, anger pulling at his mouth. "You lost me. Well, John, I lost you _too_. I didn't know if I would ever see you again. At least you _knew _you wouldn't. At least you could start to build something new."

"God, not that again," John burst out. "Do you really think I could start to build something new after I'd been made to believe my best friend had been lying to me all this time and then apparently was desperate enough to throw himself off a roof in front of my eyes, while I hadn't seen any of it coming? _Really_?"

"You were doing okay, weren't you? You have all these new... _friends_ and _Mary_, or don't you?"

There was so much going on in this conversation, too much, and they were losing direction again – he wanted to say _well then, why did you come back just as I was, indeed, finally getting back on my feet_ or _do you seriously think I believed that you were a fraud, do you really think you're that brilliant, you didn't fool me for longer than a minute, I knew something was wrong and I never managed to completely shake that feeling_ or just _you wanker_ or just, a bit more desperately _please just let me in, please_. He couldn't say all of them, so he opted for: "We went through completely different things. I'm pretty sure of it. And that's _okay_, except for the fact that I actually have absolutely no clue what it is that _you _went through. You must understand how hard that is for me."

Sherlock looked at him for a long moment, and his face softened somewhat, but John could tell that he didn't, he didn't understand, not really. As the seconds ticked away, the anger on his face was replaced by a growing confusion. "Why do you want to know?"

"I just want to try to understand why you are the way you are now," John said, throat tight.

"I'm not different," Sherlock said, voice clipped.

"Yes you are," John simply responded.

There was another long silence as they stared at each other. Finally, Sherlock's eyes flicked down. "I've had to kill a lot of people. I've had a lot of people try to kill me. But I won, every time." He caught John's eyes again. "Enough?" he asked, face stony.

It really wasn't, of course. John opened his mouth to say so, but then this happened: "Please, John," Sherlock said.

And a stone dropped into John's stomach – a hot, teeming ball of things, inextricably bound up with each other, a mix of shock at hearing Sherlock say please, of strange guilt at having used those exact same words to come just now, of worry at the way Sherlock's face kept returning to that mask, of anger at Sherlock's continued unwillingness, of sadness at the knowledge that Sherlock's past two years must have been nothing short of horrific, of frustration at the way he kept being shut out, and lots of things that he couldn't untwist from each other.

He looked at Sherlock, not knowing how to reconcile the plea with the utter blankness Sherlock's face was presenting him.

"Okay," he said weakly. "Let's just get to the crime scene. But I'm not going until you eat this toast." Sherlock didn't say anything, but accepted the plate.

In the cab, Sherlock grabbed John's hand unexpectedly. John jerked at the sudden contact, then relaxed into the touch, feeling his heart beating in his ears. After a few seconds, he decided to follow his urge, and threaded his fingers through Sherlock's, cursing the leather gloves silently. Sherlock let him without comment. John glanced down at their hands, and wondered when this had become normal in their friendship. If he was honest it wasn't exactly normal in a friendship, but then, hardly any of this qualified as a normal friendship, anyway. But even then, this physicality – Sherlock's hand in his hair in that first moment when he hadn't been able stop himself from vomiting, Sherlock grabbing his hand at the Chinese restaurant and holding it almost all the way through, Sherlock putting his fingers on his shoulder to show John that he had a hold over him, Sherlock brushing up against him to grab a teacup John couldn't reach, Sherlock grabbing his sleeve and hanging onto it as John joined him at the Yard, and now this – it was new in its quiet consistency. Did it have to do with Sherlock's body, then? Had he seen how it was more than just transport in the weeks of agony that must have held him in an unbearable limbo after his jump? Was he suddenly susceptible to the joys of physical contact? Or had something else happened, in Helsinki, in South America, wherever else he might have been? John swallowed, a lump forming in his throat. It was _nice_, it was, it was more than nice, it gave him such a feeling of – God, who was he – emotional connectedness that it sometimes was a bit hard to bear. But it was also confusing, only fanning the flame of his conflict further, as it quietly fed into his attraction to Sherlock and his desire to be closer, closer...

Sherlock squeezed his hand lightly, a slight tightening of fingers that had John's heart hammering, and he didn't release his pressing hold until they had to get out of the car.

John felt light, and a bit conflicted, but mostly light, until his phone pinged and he read _Hey, where are you? I thought you were coming over?_and he remembered, with a pang, that he was supposed to go to Mary's.

"Shit," he swore under his breath, feeling like a right tosser for more reasons than one, but slipped the phone back in his pocket without replying, because Sherlock was off already, coat flying, and John didn't have a clue were he was going. He'd reply later, apologise, and try to reschedule.

Things were pressing in on him that he didn't know the names of.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

After Sherlock's glorious monologue at the Yard (about how the only possible resolution was that, while it had been the woman's live-in father, suffering from severe Alzheimer's, who had ill-advisedly made the changes to the crime scene to make it seem like a murder-suicide because the man couldn't remember anything, and was frightened to death that it had been him who'd killed his daughter and son-in-law in a moment of senselessness, it was the woman's lover who had actually killed the couple; the husband had walked in on them and things had escalated – the lover had clubbed the husband to death with the clunky design lamp post, the imprint of which was still visible on the carpet and which they would probably find in a garbage skip not too far from the house, while the wife had tried to stop him, and in a fit of panic and insanity he couldn't think of anything else than kill her too; and anyway they would find him by just going to his house, his address was in her wallet, and he, not at all a killer at heart, wouldn't have known what to do except sit at home in continued panic – ugh, _sentiment_) and the easy arrest, Greg asked both of them to go have a drink. It wasn't even eleven; Sherlock had solved the case in an astounding record time, and Greg had decided that called for a celebration.

John, who'd got an _I'm not really free any evening next week_ in response to his last text to Mary, was all too happy to agree. To John's surprise Sherlock immediately said he'd come too. He eyed his companion curiously, but Sherlock just gave him a minute shrug, as if saying _It was your idea, wasn't it_? Greg looked pleasantly surprised.

They walked to the pub where John and Greg had spent numerous nights together in Sherlock's absence – for a while, before New Breath, Greg had been the only person to sometimes get John out of his flat. And now Sherlock was here, too. John looked at him with a sudden tenderness as Sherlock was sitting down – lanky, awkward now that he was so out of his element. Sherlock really didn't look at home in a pub.

"Pints, both of you?" Greg asked. John nodded, and was surprised when Sherlock did too.

"You don't like beer," he said as Greg went over the bar.

"I do now," Sherlock said. Then, in response to John's questioning face, he added: "I had a contact in Peru who worked in a brewery."

"Oh," John said, "right." Peru, then. A contact.

Sherlock studied him, seemed to be thinking for a second, and then said: "He saved my life a couple of times. He didn't really know why I was there. Thought I'd got too involved in the coca trade. I let him believe that. He wasn't exactly clean himself, so it worked out. It was still safer than the truth. Anyway, he... He was surprisingly loyal to someone who he thought to be chased by drug lords." He went silent, thoughtful.

"He was your friend," John supplied.

Sherlock looked at him, a strange expression on his face. "Yes, I suppose so," he said, more quietly, almost inaudibly in the pub sounds.

Greg came back, balancing three pints. John took his. Sherlock took a big gulp, then grimaced slightly.

John chuckled. "Peruvian beer more palatable than our genuine British brews? You traitor."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but his face was mild. Greg looked a little confused at their conversation, but then held out his glass for them to clink, and said: "To a winning team."

"A team the Yard doesn't actually deserve," John supplied.

"A team I don't actually deserve either," Sherlock said, unexpectedly, and Greg and John exchanged a careful, puzzled look, but Sherlock was drinking his beer, not offering up anything else.

After a slightly awkward pause, Greg said: "So, you lads all settled in at Baker Street again, then?"

"Like we never left," John said, catching Sherlock's eye for a moment.

"Almost," Sherlock said, and he knocked back another big gulp.

–

"Sherlock," Greg was saying, slightly slurred, leaning over the table closer to Sherlock, "I'm so sorry I arrested you. That was... That was wrong of me."

Sherlock, on his fifth pint, face flushed and eyes shining, responded: "Lestrade, you've arrested me lots of times."

"But that time was different. Different," he repeated, as though he'd only just discovered the word.

Sherlock leaned over the table too, into Greg's space; it could have been a peace offering, or a challenge, or maybe both. John observed them with a pleasant warmth in his stomach, sipping his beer. "You can't help it that you're a stupid idiot, Lestrade," Sherlock said, but John could tell his small smile was actually genuine, a rare occurrence in public, "so don't be sorry; everyone was fooled."

"Except for John," Greg said, looking over at John.

"That's because –" Sherlock suppressed something that might have been a hiccough, "because John is brilliant, unlike everyone else."

"That's true," Greg agreed, and saluted John with his pint.

"John is actually –" Sherlock began, then paused to take another swig of beer, "John is actually the only one on the – on the planet who's got a clue about anything."

John frowned, the words filtering in through his tipsiness. "What are you on about, you?" he said, feeling his tongue catching on the words. "I don't know anything."

"You are brilliant," Sherlock insisted.

"Yes, John, yes, you are," Greg supplied, nodding enthusiastically.

Sherlock ignored him, and now leaned over the table in John's direction. John watched his face approach stupidly, feeling too sluggish to react. "John," he said, and pointed an unsteady finger at John, "you're the most singularly eshtra – eshtra – extraordinary man I've ever met."

"No, that's you," John returned without thinking.

Sherlock shook his head. "'s You," he said, voice gaining an urgency, "always you. You make me... _see_. You're like..." He shook his head again, wide-eyed. "You're like a _microscope_. But for... feelings." Then he frowned, as though he didn't quite understand what he was saying.

John didn't quite understand either; he was a bit drunk, and so was Sherlock, but the realisation that this was a genuine, rare, rather painfully honest compliment hit him with clarity. He wasn't quite drunk enough not to be aware that he never would have if he hadn't had six pints, but he said: "I love you."

Sherlock's frown cleared off. For a moment, the mask slipped on – his face a blankness that said only that it was hiding so many things – but then he couldn't hold it, and he looked a bit happy, a bit surprised, a lot startled.

"I love both of you," Greg murmured from his corner. John held Sherlock's gaze for a long moment, suddenly very aware of the fact that their faces were very close, before they both looked at Greg – who didn't look that drunk anymore, but quite introspective, inspecting his glass seriously. John broke into a laugh at the sight, and Greg giggled along with him, and Sherlock also joined in with a deep, low chuckle.

Sherlock got to his feet, a bit wobbly. "I'm getting another," he said. "John?"

"'m fine," John said, trying to get a grip on the heat in his gut.

"Lestrade?"

"Don't mind if I do," Greg said, draining the last of his previous pint and passing the glass to Sherlock.

"Well, he's all... sociable all of a sudden," Greg told John as Sherlock picked his way over to the bar. John tore his eyes from his retreating form.

"It's the beer," he said.

"Don't think it is," Greg said, leaning his chin on his hand, and fixing John with a surprisingly steady look. "I think it's you."

John didn't know how to respond to that, and instead took another swig, trying to avoid Greg's knowing gaze, which was proving to be still quite sharp after six pints.

–

"Christ, Sherlock, this seems a little excessive," John panted as he tried to help Sherlock up the stairs. "Can you be at least a bit cooperative?"

"No," Sherlock groaned.

John made a sound of frustration, but then managed to get them up to the top stairs and hauled Sherlock through the door.

"You really don't hold your liquor very well. I mean, seriously, you were a seasoned intravenous drug user but this knocks you down? Your Peruvian friend never bought you eight pints in a row, then?" John asked Sherlock as he helped him over to the sofa, where he dropped down heavily. John himself felt his head clearing bit by bit already; he'd stopped after six pints, and that was nothing he wasn't used to, and the realisation that Sherlock was really quite drunk and needed his coordination had sobered him up as well. He went over and lit one of the small lamps on the coffee table, bathing the room in a muted light.

Sherlock didn't respond, just snuggled to a more comfortable position in the cushions. John busied himself with undoing Sherlock's laces and tugged his shoes off his feet.

"You've still got your coat on," he said.

Sherlock made a sound that clearly said _don't care_. Okay, so really quite drunk, then; Sherlock would normally never sleep in his expensive designer clothes.

"At least let me –" John said, then just leaned in and unlooped Sherlock's scarf, tugging it gently from his neck. The coat would have to stay on, unless Sherlock was able to stay awake for a bit more. As he pulled his hands back, Sherlock grabbed his wrist.

"John," he mumbled, his voice even deeper than usual.

"I'm here," John said automatically.

"No, you're not," Sherlock slurred.

"I am." He allowed Sherlock's hand to pull him in, and he plopped to his knees next to the couch, ignoring the slight pain of hitting the ground.

"Not... not enough," Sherlock was mumbling.

John was silent for a bit, trying to calm down the insane feeling of want roaring through his chest, fed by the alcohol and Sherlock's closeness, and his rare vulnerability.

"What do you need?" he finally asked as Sherlock didn't say anything anymore, just held a firm grip on his wrist. "Water?"

Sherlock laughed at that, a short spontaneous burst of chuckles, too loud for the hour.

"Not water," he said after he'd quieted down.

"What then?" John prompted after a moment.

"I don't... I don't know," Sherlock said, and he sounded surprised, and uncomfortable; and John thought, well, that _would _be a new sensation to him.

He waited for a bit, but nothing seemed to be forthcoming. "You going to sleep here, then?" he asked. "Or do you want me to –"

Sherlock released his hold on John's wrist, but instead wrapped his hand around the back of his neck and pulled him in forcefully, bringing their mouths together in a lop-sided, badly aimed, surprised kiss. John _oof_ed against his mouth; their teeth clinked together; Sherlock froze completely under him; it was quite terrible until John realised where he was, and who he was, and who Sherlock was and with a growl that he hadn't known he had in him, he threw all caution into the wind and went for it – he tilted Sherlock's head towards him and kissed him full on the mouth, feeling those lips – _those fucking lips_ – part beneath his easily, moulding against his, as Sherlock's hand on his neck became a vice grip, screwing them together with the surprising strength Sherlock had. Sherlock was sticky and tasted heavy with beer, but oh, he was twisting his tongue against John's, licking into John's mouth meanderingly, he was making deep sounds into the kiss, incomprehensible until they became distinct; _si, si_, hisses of desire, and God, this couldn't be real but it was, it _was_, and John half-moaned in spite of himself when he identified the Spanish. Sherlock was half trying to get up, pressing up into the kiss, snaking the arm that wasn't around his neck around John's back, he was kissing back with abandon, his technique sloppy and unrefined, but it was okay, it was _good_, because it was Sherlock kissing him –

Suddenly, John's synapses finally succeeded in making contact again, and he pulled back with a jerk, but not so strongly that he broke through the circle of Sherlock's arms, so that he was kept in place very, very close to Sherlock's face.

"What?" Sherlock hissed.

"What – what are we –" John spluttered, dazed, brain screaming.

"No," Sherlock said simply, introducing a _no_ into their lives that was acceptable because it was really a _yes_, and pulled him back in, closed his mouth over his again, more gently this time, licking at John's lower lip. John fell into the kiss again, and accepted Sherlock's tongue into his mouth gladly, gripping his shoulders – but then, he shook his head against Sherlock and pulled back again. This time, Sherlock let him go.

"Sherlock," John said, his breathing heavy, "you're so drunk – I can't – not –"

"John," Sherlock groaned, and it was enough to have blood rushing to his cock, "don't do that – not now –"

"Fuck," John swore, and he kissed Sherlock again, in spite of himself. "Please tell me," he said between kisses, "that you want this."

"Idiot," Sherlock panted against him, "_evidently_."

And John had to take a moment to laugh, a wild, confused laugh, but Sherlock grabbed his collar and dragged him back in, sucking on his bottom lip, and making a deep sound that reverberated right down to his groin.

"Right," John squeaked as he came up for air, head spinning, "please tell me you'll – you'll be okay with this tomorrow."

"John," Sherlock said, and his voice was surprisingly steady, even though it was clouded and dark with desire, "I can't tell you for _how long_– tomorrow will be okay."

"You bastard, you're not even that drunk, are you?" John said in a daze, as Sherlock tugged at him again, enticing him back in.

Sherlock chuckled. "I am, actually, somewhat," he said slowly against John's ear, the sound of his breathing sparking arousal in the pit of John's stomach, "but my head is clearing – it's not – not an act, John, not this time –" and John kissed him for that, for knowing John's fear, for knowing John's need for him to be honest right now, to be there, to really be Sherlock and nothing else.

"You're still in your coat," John breathed as they broke apart again, and Sherlock laughed, a generous, warm sound.

The long garment was impossible to remove without Sherlock getting off the couch; he swayed a bit as he got to his feet, but steadied himself against John, who'd stood up together with him. Sherlock threw the coat on the floor – uncharacteristically unconcerned about it – and wasted no time getting his hands under John's jumper, tugging it up.

"John," he all but moaned, in his infuriating, maddening voice, "you _really _need to rethink your wardrobe."

"Never," John said, but helped Sherlock get the thick jumper over his head.

Sherlock stooped down and kissed him, deeply, and John could tell that he was a quick learner at everything; he parted John's lips with his tongue easily, and more confidently than anyone had the right to he tried out the different textures inside John's mouth – tongue, teeth, palate. All the while his hands were picking at the buttons of John's shirt, undoing them one by one and pushing the shirt over his shoulders. John shivered as Sherlock finally got to his bare skin, feeling his way across his chest. The initial confusion was clearing somewhat, and the force of his arousal was quite effectively pushing everything else away, except a persisting feeling of overwhelming, dazed joy. Sherlock bit down on his lip semi-sharply, as though trying it out, and the slight sting had John arching forward, desperate for contact.

He fumbled with the buttons on Sherlock's shirt, the tightness of it resisting him a bit too much for his liking, so he pulled at it.

"Careful with the shirt," Sherlock growled against his mouth.

"You and your ridiculous – shirts," John panted, breath hitching as Sherlock unapologetically slid a hand down to his crotch and fondled his erection through his trousers.

"Not ridiculous," Sherlock said smoothly, if a bit breathlessly.

"Ridiculous, yes," John countered, though it was harder to get the words from his brain to his mouth with Sherlock's hand pressing down on his erection, "always so – tight – begging to be ripped off you – I can't – _ah_–"

"Shut up," Sherlock said earnestly, pulling at his belt. John did, undoing the buttons on that _ridiculous __shirt_, but with a bit more precision now, and then pulled it loose from the waist of his trousers and tugged it off his shoulders, down his arms, struggling for a moment with the still-fastened cuffs. He ran his hands all the way back up, over the planes of arm and chest, smooth and pale under his fingers. He took a moment to look at Sherlock, illuminated by the warm light of the small lamp. There were small, newish criss-crossings of scars leading down from one hip into Sherlock's trousers; knife marks, maybe, or small whip stings, something like that. John gulped, suddenly realising what he was looking at. He tried to find the marks, x and x and x, where Sherlock would bear the evidence of his fall. There was a small, but raised scar on Sherlock's abdomen – John couldn't tell what it could have been the result of. His ran his hands over the curves and dips of Sherlock's shoulders; that the bones there were smooth and steady under his grip was nothing short of miraculous, that Sherlock was still here, still held together by the so easily dissolved bonds of tendon and muscle was something to wonder at deeply. There was a deep mark on the right side of Sherlock's torso, a years-old scar that ran the length of the underside of his ribs. John traced it, as Sherlock held silent against him, breathing heavily, allowing this with a strange stillness – John realised it had to be from the jump; a part of his weight would have landed on this spot. His ribs would have cracked, and one of them had apparently been forced outward, violently piercing the skin above it. Life-threatening. His lungs would have been at an extremely high risk of being punctured, and that would very likely have been it for him, even with Molly waiting for him inside, only minutes away, all the magic she could perform waiting in her fingers, trying to sustain life for once, instead of cataloguing death.

"Christ," he said, involuntarily, as the enormity of it hit him.

Sherlock took his face into his hands, and looked at him with a clouded, unreadable expression for a long moment. "Don't bring him into this," he said, voice tight with something John couldn't identify. Then he leaned down and kissed John, with an insistence that made John's knees forget what their function was. After a couple of moments his shakenness at seeing the scars melted into renewed arousal, and he pushed up at Sherlock, giving back into the searing kiss, moving his hand from the scar to caress the rest of Sherlock's torso; the unmarred skin, the blood underneath jumping up at his touch, unbelievably, miraculously, overwhelmingly alive.

He was rewarded with a sharp intake of breath from Sherlock as he slid his hands down from his shoulders to his waist, and lower still until he met the boundary of his trousers, following the thin trail of hair that led down into them.

John pulled him down for another kiss, and then said: "You're really too fucking tall, Sherlock."

"Sofa," Sherlock simply said in response, and he allowed John to push him into it, only putting up a pretense of resistance. He twisted until he was lying on his back across the length of it.

John joined him, though there was no real room for him; Sherlock spread his knees so John could crouch between his legs. Sherlock closed his knees against him, squeezing him gently, and that small gesture of possession made John's cock twitch. He took a second to look at Sherlock, sprawled under him – so awkwardly gorgeous, too long in every sense, long-limbed, long-featured, so alien, so heavily marked, so absolutely heart-stoppingly alluring.

"Fuck," he breathed.

"Brilliant deduction, John, glad to see you follow," Sherlock said, reaching up to undo John's belt, and it would have been casual if his voice hadn't been darkened with lust and alcohol.

John stilled for a moment. "Sherlock," he said, a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach.

But it was Sherlock, and he didn't have to say it, because Sherlock knew already. "John, it's not because Moriarty and my brother lack the creativity to imagine anything about my sex life that I don't have one," he almost bit, sounding more lucid than anyone with eight pints in their system and with someone else's erection pressing into their legs had a right to.

"So you – you're not –"

Sherlock sighed, sounding long-suffering. "_No._" He looked up at John, defiance and tenderness meshing in an entirely particular way. "Though it's fair to say I'm not – very experienced," he stumbled over the words uncharacteristically, and there was such an openness in his face, a rare display of unrestrained, undiluted Sherlock-ness, and John had to swallow looking at it.

"Me neither – with this," he ground out.

"Evidently. I gathered as much," Sherlock said almost drily, popping the button on his trousers – and John decided that this conversation could wait, it would have to wait, because Sherlock was looking up at him in a way that couldn't match any of the fantasies he'd had, because of course the real Sherlock beat out any imagined Sherlock by miles; his eyes light and focused and almost too intense to bear, giving John his full attention, startling at the most mundane of times, but now, with Sherlock tugging his trousers down to his thighs, almost unbearable in its splendidness.

Not to be outdone, he undid Sherlock's trousers as well as he could with Sherlock fondling his cock through his boxers. Sherlock helpfully lifted his hips so John could, with difficulty, peel down his trousers over his hips to his thighs - "Why is everything so tight with you?" he said, then gasped as Sherlock grabbed the base of his cock.

"Don't pretend you don't like it," Sherlock growled, and he sounded dangerous, a similar kind of menace dripping from him as when he was pointing a gun at someone – John's cock pulsed in Sherlock's hand in response. Then, apparently growing impatient, Sherlock pushed down his own underpants, fancy, silky, purple, of course; releasing a long cock, the sight of which gave John an unexpected, deep thrill – and then pulled at the waistband of John's boxers until his erection sprang free, and then finally, _finally_, there was the contact of his long fingers directly on John's cock.

"Fuck, Sherlock," John said, thrusting forward involuntarily.

"Come here," Sherlock told him, voice such a soft, low, deep shiver that John felt the need to obey, immediately. He let himself drop forward, resting his weight first on his hands next to Sherlock's torso, then directly on him, sliding their chests together.

Sherlock hummed with approval, and shifted around under John, making small sounds that made John's head spin, until their hips were aligned. Sherlock pushed upward and the contact between their erections was more electric than John had ever expected a simple touch could be.

"Yes, you, yes," Sherlock hissed; John latched his teeth onto the skin of his neck, where his throat melted into his clavicle, and Sherlock jerked upwards, an honest moan escaping him. He rubbed himself up against John, hips snapping upward relentlessly, and John moved with him, helplessly caught in the rhythm, still firmly under Sherlock's control despite his being on top, but he couldn't care, he didn't mind, Sherlock was grasping at him, at his hair, at his neck, and their cocks were sliding together in a delicious jumble of hot flesh and slight dampness.

"You," Sherlock growled into his ear, and he made it sound like the dirtiest of curses; John moaned as Sherlock manoeuvered his hand between them, somewhat awkwardly, with some difficulty wrapping his hand around their pricks, but it worked somehow, and John could only whimper in response as he thrust into his grip.

"Yes, you, John, now, _you_," Sherlock panted, squeezing them together even more.

"I –" John managed to say before he was coming, spilling himself between them, pressing his face down into Sherlock's shoulder, unable to stifle the groan falling from his mouth.

"Extraordinary," Sherlock said in his ear, lips brushing his ear lobe, and he kept on repeating it through John's orgasm; two, three times: _extraordinary_.

John half collapsed onto him, but tried to still keep eye contact, only half-succeeding; and Sherlock pressed himself up against him, his hand slipping from John's cock to his own, maybe six, seven more strokes of fist, now damp with the slickness of John's come between them, increasingly uncomfortable against John's softening prick; and Sherlock came with a silent intensity that was beautiful and strange at the same time – his eyes were open, showing the whites like clouds billowing in his skull, and his mouth was closed, dark, tensed, his teeth worrying at his lips.

John fitted his forehead into the curve of Sherlock's neck as he could feel the tension in Sherlock's limbs bleeding away. Their breathing was erratic, mismatched, slowing at different paces. Sherlock's hand found its way back onto John's back, resting there like an anchoring point, a point of gravity.

"Fuck," John said, when he'd regained the ability.

"You swear far too much," Sherlock responded, lightly, voice only bearing minute traces of what had just happened.

"I think I've – earned that right," John said, noting absent-mindedly that he had absolutely no feelings in that moment, except for a transcendent contentment that felt too large to contain in the borders of his body – and he wondered not for the first time at how simple things could be, sometimes, for a little while.

Sherlock said nothing for a short while, but as the seconds slipped by his hand tensed on John. Eventually, he spoke, words rushed: "Are you all right?"

John, who'd been fighting the onset of the post-orgasmic fatigue he knew very well, blinked against Sherlock's neck. "Yeah, I – I think I am. Why do you...?" he didn't finish the question, not quite knowing what he wanted it to be.

"Was this okay?" Sherlock asked, too-rapidly.

John, with some effort, lifted himself off Sherlock, unsticking himself from the film of sweat and come between them (about which he surprisingly didn't care at all), and looked Sherlock in the eye. Sherlock jerked, as though he hadn't been expecting that at all.

"It was more than okay," John said.

Sherlock looked relieved for a moment, but then, unbidden, horribly, his face relaxed into the slackness of the mask.

"No," John said before he knew it, "don't do that."

"Do what?" Sherlock intoned.

"Shut me out. Don't." _Just don't_.

Sherlock blinked, and his face twitched and was alive again; tiredness, inebriation, some wonder, some confusion, a small frown.

"Do you even know that you do that?" John asked him, quietly.

Sherlock closed his eyes for a second. Yes, he did. He obviously did. When did Sherlock Holmes ever do anything he wasn't aware of?

"You don't need to with me," John said, and then felt like a character in a romantic comedy for a bit, in a fictional universe where words actually covered their meanings, overlapping them perfectly, and weren't infected by all sorts of different things, which was a universe in which no one actually lived; and he laughed at himself in his mind, slightly hysterical, because what the fuck was even happening to him? The small moment in which things were simple was passing quickly, and things were pressing in on them again from all sides, quickly trickling into... whatever it was that they had just shared.

Sherlock gave a small chuckle, darker than John wanted to hear, speaking volumes about the way it wasn't saying anything. But he let it pass, because there wasn't much he could say to laughter. And because he couldn't hear what it was Sherlock wasn't saying.

"Sherlock," he eventually said, "we just had sex."

"Well deduced, John," Sherlock responded, the sarcasm less easy than it would usually be.

"We just had sex." Like saying it out loud made it something that had actually happened, or at least something that didn't resist categorisation completely.

"I know."

"_Sex_."

"Stop saying that," Sherlock all but snapped, and John felt an urge to laugh; so overwhelming, so inappropriate, so wrong and also so right, and he couldn't fight it, and soon he was giggling into Sherlock's neck.

"Not the best response I've ever had after mutual orgasms," Sherlock said when he finally calmed down again.

"God, no," John said, "best mutual orgasm I've ever had." And then he stopped to wonder at himself for a bit, because where had _that_ come from; it had slipped out as though he no longer had any control, as though the press of Sherlock's hands on his back had taken out everything in him that had the slightest inkling what exactly was going on, as though he had really and truly lost himself. It wasn't that it wasn't true – although he even now, still in the clutches of post-orgasmic stupour, knew that there was just no comparing this to anything else he had ever done, ever, because it was sex, but it was also _Sherlock_, and it just wasn't the same thing, just like nothing Sherlock ever did was ever the same thing as anything else, ever – but the way he had lost control, words just slipping out like that, was new, and frightening, and well, that fitted Sherlock perfectly, didn't it.

There was a silence, and it wasn't quite comfortable, and it wasn't quite awkward.

"What now?" John asked himself out loud – and well, he guessed that meant he was asking Sherlock too.

Sherlock was silent underneath him, a long stretch of body and mind, reverberating with all the sounds that exist in silence.

He answered his own question after a while, in a sense, or at least part of the extensive spectrum the question spanned: "Do you want to sleep?"

Sherlock answered with a small body jerk, a shrug that moved the entirety of him: _I don't know_.

John hesitated for a small moment, and then remembered that he was lying on top of Sherlock, with the evidence of both of their orgasms between them, gluing them together in more than one sense, and well, it was all quite clear, wasn't it, hiding didn't really make any sense anymore. "I'd like to sleep with you," he said, quietly. He lifted his head to look at Sherlock, and found him looking back; a small grace, a small miracle in a world with so much to wonder at.

"Literally, I presume," Sherlock said, his voice back to the undisturbed smoothness that John knew so well.

"Evidently," John said, borrowing Sherlock's lexicon for once – because if not now, then when? When would he ever get so close to Sherlock's language, ever again?

Sherlock seemed to be considering it quite seriously. "Fine," he said, finally, "but I need to shower."

"Me too," John mumbled, getting more and more aware of the state of his body as the pleasure from before sank away slowly.

"I'll go first," Sherlock said after another second, and then he was gone, slipping out from under the press of John with a disconcerting, startling ease, pulling off his trousers fluidly next to the couch, leaving John grasping at not a lot more than air.

John listened to him padding to the bathroom, something horrible and perfect twisting inside him at the same time, and realised that he had never felt so conflicted. The shower was switched on, and John couldn't help but think, in an almost Sherlock-type way: _there goes all of the evidence_, all of the evidence that he, John Watson, had been there, and there, and had staked his claim on a small part of Sherlock Holmes, a minute part by the look of things, but still something, and really, who could ever hope for anything more? Still, it was all being washed down-drain, brushed off by Sherlock's own fingers, and how could he ever believe it again, without proof?

Sherlock stepped out of the bathroom after about five minutes, as gloriously naked as when he'd gone in, only now slightly shiny in the unfitting, romantic light of the living room, curls flopping into his face. He graced John with a smile, and John knew him well enough to know that it was half genuine, half calculated.

"Your room," he decided, then was off, a streak of body and tensing mind underneath.

John sighed and rolled off the sofa. He got up and stood for a bit, working off his trousers, his brain still scrabbling to reconstruct everything, but then he just wasn't Sherlock, and it didn't quite work. In any case the soft glow of the lamp inside 221B seemed out of place, as though no light really had the right to remain unchanged after what had just happened.

He went into the shower. He counted the tiles surrounding the shower head. He tried to find any sign of Sherlock having been there minutes before, though he knew he wouldn't find any – Sherlock could probably tell John exactly what he'd done the five previous time he'd been in this shower, just by looking at it, but he himself simply couldn't, and the barrier was too strong to break through; he couldn't imagine Sherlock as he was alone.

He found himself crying a bit under the warm stream of water, and then tried to shake himself out of it, because _God_, he was crying again, and _why_? He'd just had fairly amazing sex with Sherlock, something that he'd been hoping for for... well, for _years_, fuck it, and things like that actually _happened _in this universe, it was actually possible, there was so much to wonder at in this world. Still, the fact that he couldn't picture Sherlock in this shower, finally off his guard, finally on his own, drove home the fact that Sherlock still had so much more knowledge of him, and of them, than John ever would.

He drew patterns on his belly with his fingers as the water washed him clean, the traces of Sherlock flowing away, joining so many things that were too impure. God, what was his life. Under the heat of the water he remembered Mary, and something crumbled inside him. God, who was he. He hadn't even _thought_ about her, not once, not from the moment Sherlock had curled his fingers around his neck to bring him down for that first frantic, horrible kiss to the moment when he came, Sherlock's voice providing the structure to his undoing, and he had been laid bare by just one syllable – _you_, and Mary hadn't been anywhere near his mind in that way, she'd never been able to see him that way, to open him up, to see his otherness, his humanity, she wouldn't try to uncover him that way, which worked to her credit, she couldn't, which unfairly and horribly _didn't _work to her credit.

He switched off the shower and stood in the cooling air for another, too-long moment, feeling the droplets rolling off him; his skin felt alien on him, as though he was just wearing it, as though it wasn't part of him anymore.

He asked himself quite seriously and a touch hysterically: _was this the right decision_? And then he laughed at himself, because it hadn't been a decision at all, it had been like a hurricane, a landslide; Sherlock the force of nature uprooting everything again, pulling the tentative new seedlings of John Watson out and examining them under his microscope.

_You're like a microscope_, Sherlock had said, before the world had changed, before they'd come against each other's cocks, sharing breath, sharing skin. _But for feelings_, he'd then said, and Christ, John didn't feel like it was true, though it seemed strange to think of anything that Sherlock had said as wrong – John still had no idea what Sherlock was feeling, and really, he wasn't even sure what _he_was feeling, apart from the undeniable, the constant, the unmentionable, the uncompromising, the absolute love he had for Sherlock.

He remembered Sherlock in his bed, and there was the strange dual sensation of _yes_ and _no_.

_Yes_ won out, of course, because that kind of _no _had no right anymore, it had been banished from their lives at least for a little while. He went back into the living room and looked over the battlefield of the evening, of the night, a crime scene – before he went upstairs he picked up Sherlock's coat and hung it on the hook at its proper place; a peace offering if there ever was any.

He padded up the stairs, footsteps sounding slightly too hollow to be real, and had the peculiar sensation of being a character in a novel. Fictional. Thinly spread. No backstory. Just a body going up a staircase. And then it all came back, his life, what he was, who he'd been with and who he'd been without, and then he was John Watson again as he pushed open the door to his bedroom, and Sherlock Holmes was in his bed, twisted in the sheets, and looking at him, having been watching the door all this time.

"I thought you weren't coming," Sherlock said as he made his way over to the bed – his bed, their bed, at least for tonight.

"Why wouldn't I?" he asked.

Sherlock's face had closed up a little already, but some of his openness had remained; he looked worried. "You're not all right." And it wasn't even a question.

And of all people to be honest with – Greg, Sharon, Ian, Bill, Mary; all deserving of honesty in their own, particular ways – Sherlock was still the best, because he didn't bother with emotional layers, he saw through emotions hiding themselves in each other immediately, even if he didn't see _why_. "I don't know," John therefore said.

Sherlock looked a bit distressed. "I want you to be all right, John."

"I will be all right," he said softly, suddenly very aware of his nakedness.

"Why aren't you all right now?" Sherlock was apparently also very aware of his nakedness, but didn't do what most people would do, even after sex – giving the body its privacy back, giving it a slight berth, leaving it intact. Sherlock was unapologetically, pointedly looking at everything of him; and his body responded in a shocked, but willing way, just as his eyes always did when Sherlock looked at him – it was the first time other parts of him had felt so particularly assailed by Sherlock's gaze, and it wasn't bad, not at all, it was just... peculiar. And breathtaking, if he was honest.

"I am all right, actually," John said finally, and it wasn't even far from the truth, and expressable in a way that the truth wasn't.

"Do you regret it already?" Sherlock's eyes narrowed. Trying to gather the data of him, trying to click things into place. "Usually that's reserved for the morning after, isn't it?"

John felt a small twinge of resentment at being reduced to 'usually'. "I don't regret it," he said, rapidly, then continued, after a breath: "I still don't know how _you_are, and that's what... is difficult."

Sherlock's eyes widened in a startled version of the look – _Christ, John, you know. And if you don't, then_– "John," he said, "it's obvious, isn't it?"

John looked at him. "No."

"I'm _here_. I'm _in your bed_," Sherlock said, and made more room, pressing himself into the wall.

And John smiled at that. Because even if it wasn't as tangible as an _I love you_, it was just as untouchable, just as uncompromising, just as incommunicable, just as meaningless, just as meaningful, just as hard to see for the light shining through. Really, it wasn't that different at all.

"Yes," he breathed, insides turned to jelly once more, and switched the light off. He found the way to his bed blindly, eyes not yet adjusted to the dark, and slipped into the covers. After a couple of breathless seconds, it was Sherlock who closed the gap between them, pressing his shoulder firmly against John's, warm from his time between the sheets against John's shower-and-air-cool skin.

John stayed where he was, not quite sure what line it was they were toeing.

And – it seemed meaningful to John, though he couldn't have articulated what it was, exactly, that it meant – it was Sherlock who offered up his body, molded it to his side, a careful, curious hand coming to rest on his chest, his nose pressing a questioning line into John's temple; a curl of smoothness and rugged edges where the scars were, attaching itself to the almost vulgar obviousness of John's bare skin. A bit like a new language. With its own pitfalls, and its own wonders.

"You extraordinary man," he thought he heard Sherlock say at one point, deep in the night, with a voice that was so genuinely filled with wonder that John wasn't sure for a second if Sherlock realised he was awake, though then he remembered that it was Sherlock; so then he wasn't sure that it had happened, because maybe he imagined it, hot and sticky under the too-heavy covers as they were, their positions now melted together almost naturally, the exclamation mark of Sherlock's nose tucked into the ridge of his clavicle and the quotes of his fingers laid gently over his pulse, and it was overpowering for a bit, this new kind of speaking and being silent, before sleep finally tiptoed in almost unnoticed, un-sought-for, and took him away.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

He awoke with a startling suddenness, as though someone had yelled into his ear very hard. He opened his eyes, half-expecting Sherlock to be looming over him, urging him to wake up, but his bedroom was empty and bright with late-morning light. Sherlock was gone, though the stretch of mattress next to John wasn't quite cool yet. He bit down on a twinge of disappointment – maybe if Sherlock had still been here, visible, physical, yielding to touch in the morning's honest light, it might have made the transition into this new world, this fundamentally changed world, a world in which he and Sherlock had had sex, a little easier. Now the break was like the chasm between tectonic plates, and John didn't know how he'd have to get to the other side.

He stretched himself out, allowing himself this moment of calm before the inevitable storm, feeling the ominous feeling in his stomach intensify with every second he was awake. The night had been a strange sequence of vague, feverish impressions and stretches of oblivious sleep, with a clearer realisation of _Sherlock is next to me _every time he woke up, so that by the final time it was already at the forefront of his mind – at one point Sherlock had been licking his neck carefully as though trying out its taste, waking him up; at another Sherlock had been sitting against the headboard, the warm length of his leg pressed against John, his face illuminated by the cold light of his phone; and then at another Sherlock had actually been sleeping, mumbling in a mix of English and Spanish, taking up far too much room, limbs thrown out, hyperactive even in his rest. John had felt glad to know that Sherlock had spent a portion of his night sleeping; it seemed to restore some normality to the situation, and it had also felt intimate to share sleep with Sherlock, for Sherlock to offer up himself in a different state, one that he had less control over, even if he'd kept John awake for quite some time with his fitful sleeping.

He closed his eyes for a moment. His head throbbed a bit with the residue of last night's drinking. So now here he was, finally having taken the chance to do things differently, and just as he'd thought it hadn't been anything like what he'd imagined – real life one-upping fantasy at every turn, gleefully turning everything on its head, infecting everything with everything else. Nothing was quite as simple as it had seemed in the apparent certainty of death – life was a teeming, growing thing, putting out roots in different directions, trying to survive in whatever way worked, and of course nothing was just something, nothing simply lead to something else with the narrative clarity that art had but life lacked. Still, he quirked a smile as he remembered that finally, finally, he had been able to touch Sherlock, and that Sherlock had, incomprehensibly, miraculously, seemed to want him just as much – _you_, he recalled, Sherlock had kept returning to _you_ in an almost uncharacteristic focus on someone else, and not just anyone else, John. _You_, his brain sang, and with it came a strong thrill that was a bit frightening in its intensity.

After a moment of obsessively trying to memorise the strange, thrilling expression on Sherlock's face as he'd come so he would never be able to forget it (because there was, like a dark whisper in the back of his mind, the fear that he would never get to see it again; Sherlock didn't often do the same things twice if they didn't offer up anything new, and it would be just like him to treat sex no differently whatsoever), his mind helpfully suggested to him: _Mary_.

_Mary_. "Oh, fuck," he groaned out loud. So now he'd gone and _cheated_ on Mary, with _Sherlock_– and that took the cake for all of his fuck-ups with girlfriends, now he'd really got himself in it deep, and of course it was inevitable that it should be Sherlock, because Sherlock was the only thing in John's life that fed into that secret undercurrent of him, the underlying unconventional desires buried beneath the other part of him that was a normal bloke who just wanted to have tea and a wife who listened to him and kissed him and shared things with him, and who would never cheat. Sherlock was the only one who tapped into John's crazy addiction to danger, to trouble; John's secret thrill at leaving, going away, having different worlds, different lives; John's desires, which included having his gun with him, feeling imbued with its power, seeing the dark possibilities of the stinking, raw underbelly of the city, drawn to it, and now also: sleeping with Sherlock in the depth of night, falling into Sherlock's hands with even more finality than usual.

But in the openness of the morning light he couldn't feel like he was anything but an absolute arsehole who'd cheated on his girlfriend in a bout of drunkenness, a moment of loss of self-awareness, though that wasn't quite what had happened – it didn't matter, because that was never quite what happened, anyway, and it didn't make any difference in that it _was _what had happened.

He pressed his hands into his eyes, into the dull ache of his minor hangover. The day was starting to put some pressure on him – he couldn't stay in bed and ride this one out, not with Sherlock downstairs, and not with Mary somewhere else, both linked to him in ways that were different yet not that dissimilar. So he groaned, and swung his legs out of bed, willing the rest of him to follow. Putting clothes on felt somehow very alien.

–

Sherlock was reading the newspaper at the table, face obscured from John's view.

John cleared his throat, and then croaked, nerves screaming in his throat: "Morning," with a clear awareness that they'd set things in motion that could never completely be shifted back; even if Sherlock were to fold down the newspaper now and say: _delete last night, John, I will too_, it wouldn't work, they were linked now by body as much as by mind, and the body didn't forget. Neither did John's mind, obviously, but he was more than a bit afraid of Sherlock's ability to just chuck out things he didn't think useful – it would be the ultimate cruelty, to judge a thing of such monumentality to John irrelevant, and simply throw it out to make room for more important things.

But Sherlock slammed the newspaper onto the table with unexpected fierceness, face appearing, and he was wearing an open expression tinged with worry and annoyance – John released a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding at the absence of the mask, at the presence of Sherlock. He was dressed in his robe and apparently not much else, the pale skin of his chest peeking out between the badly-fastened sides.

"I'm having a hard time functioning after last night, John," he said conversationally, by way of good morning.

"Nothing out of the ordinary, then," John said, slipping into a chair, trying to shield that ridiculously big feeling of happiness at Sherlock's _there-ness _from Sherlock's observation skills, though he knew that was probably a fool's pursuit.

Sherlock frowned at him. "Why are you not more shaken up?"

"_More _shaken up?" John asked, surprised. "I'd say I'm rather shaken up, actually."

Sherlock fixed him with a level gaze. "When I got up, I had to think about where I'd left my robe for over a minute before I remembered."

John laughed a little. "I guess your point is that you are completely, utterly thrown for a loop, and that your mind is ruined, and you've lost all of your intellectual prowess, right?"

"Yes," Sherlock said simply, and John giggled without restraint. "Not a laughing matter," Sherlock continued darkly.

"Sorry," John hiccoughed, nervous tension and honest mirth sparking tears in his eyes.

He calmed down, and then they sat in a small silence, in which Sherlock's eyes never left his face. He cast around for something to say, but his mind was curiously blank – the only thing he could think of was _so, we had orgasms together last night _and that seemed too redundant even to him. So he got to his feet, turning to his constant companion, the one real certainty he had: tea.

"You want a cup of tea?" he asked Sherlock. Sherlock lifted one of his shoulders in a peculiar half-shrug that John decided to interpret as _yes_. He went over to the kitchen and flicked the kettle on.

"I'm serious," Sherlock told him, "it keeps on intruding."

John turned back to him. He didn't miss how Sherlock changed his expression when he turned round; from barely-concealed worry to a more smooth ticked-off-ness; not _quite _maskless then, but still close enough. He cleared his throat. "The sex, you mean?" In the light of morning, the word seemed inadequate to express what had happened in the dark clutches of the night before, but it would have to do; language stretching its boundaries to contain reality.

"Yes, and the rest of it," Sherlock waved a hand about as though trying to shake off an annoying fly.

John licked his lips. "What rest of it?"

Sherlock fixed him with a clear, piercing gaze. "You," he said simply, and John was immediately thrown back to the way he'd said it not that long ago, a hand in John's hair, thrusting upwards, almost forcing John to orgasm by saying only yes, now, _you_. John gulped.

"Me?"

"Yes, evidently," Sherlock said, now scowling a little at John's slowness. "It's never happened this way before."

The water was boiling. John prepared two cups, taking his time. The milk had gone sour. He turned around and put one of the cups in front of Sherlock, who looked at it with mild distaste, and then sat down opposite him again.

"Look, Sherlock, I know you like riddles, but can you please tell me what you mean? What way?"

"_This _way," Sherlock said, sounding frustrated, and made an involuntarily movement with his hands; it hit John that maybe he didn't quite have the language to describe this, either. "It sticks, it's not receding..." He narrowed his eyes at John, as though it was somehow the result of a cunning ploy from John's end. "It's just not going away," he ended, somewhat lamely.

John took a long moment to sip his tea, which was by all accounts still too hot to drink. "Do you want it to go away?" he finally asked.

Sherlock considered for a moment, not looking at him. "It's... _distracting_," he finally said, "but not... unwelcome, unexpectedly."

John felt a bubble of relief blowing up in his chest. He smiled. "You strange creature," he said affectionately, "so now it's 'not unwelcome' that sex should be something to stick with you, and you don't understand why?"

Sherlock scowled, as though wanting to say _of course I understand_, but he didn't say it, which was clear enough: he didn't.

"Maybe," John said carefully, trying to get past his own investment in this conversation, to impossibly forget about what was at stake here for him, "it meant something different this time."

Sherlock's eyebrows raised a bit as he thought that over. "Yes, well, that was obvious," he said, "I just hadn't expected it to have this effect on the overall experience."

"It was obvious?"

Sherlock threw him the look again, but John brushed it off and held his gaze. Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Of course it was," he said, giving in to John's questioning look, "it was _you_, John. It was logically impossible for it to mean the same thing as it has before with someone else."

John felt something burning inside him, and then wondered for a bit at the way in which he'd become a bit of an expert at picking up Sherlock's particular brand of affection, which included referring to John as a variable in an equation, with logical possibilities and impossibilities, and somehow still so human – Sherlock had basically just told him: _of course it meant something else, because I care about you so much more_. Shrouded in Sherlock-speak, sure, but it was there to be picked up, like a silent, small treasure.

"There's not a lot about sex that's logical," he finally said, blowing on his tea.

"That was never a problem before," Sherlock said, glowering at his teacup. John was tickled by the way he seemed offended by all of this, as though the sex had absolutely no right to cling to him and be this distracting and cause these problems for him. Immediately after, he felt a desire to say _will you tell me about the other times you've had sex with someone_, because it was such a new concept, Sherlock having sex with people, and it was still mostly blank; he wanted to fill it, understand it – but it didn't quite feel as though he had earned permission to know anything about that, not yet anyway.

"I have to say this is pretty flattering," he finally said, feeling his face colouring in a blush.

Sherlock broke his death glare at the teacup, and looked up at him with a slight surprise on his face. "Of course it's flattering," he said, as though it was the most logical thing in the world, and, well, it probably was to him. "I've wanted to have sex with you for so long, and it's never really gone away, even when the stimulus of you was removed for almost two years. Now that I have had sex with you, it's not going away either, and though that's not entirely unexpected, it's different from any other experience that I've had." He looked at John, almost neutrally. "I think you're mesmerising. I want to have sex with you again right now simply because of the way you're sitting in that chair and touching the handle of your teacup with your index finger."

In the silence after that, John's heart made valiant attempts to get out of his body through his mouth. "Um," he managed to say.

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow at his lack of eloquency. His face was a mixture of neutrality and an undercurrent of mischievousness that was new. "Do you have anywhere to go?" he asked, finally lifting his teacup to his mouth and taking a sip.

"I – I don't think – no," John said stupidly, and it was so easy to push away his plan to go see Mary, too easy, too horribly easy, and he had a small second of lucidity in which he knew _I have to break it off with her_, but then Sherlock took over again, and all thoughts of her receded. The fabric of life reshifting to accommodate the huge presence of Sherlock.

"Good," Sherlock said, looking determined, and stood up from his chair, shrugging his robe off, and yes, he was naked underneath, shockingly so, it was too much, too fast. John tried to formulate a response more coherent than _bwuh_, but before he could, Sherlock had walked around the table, had jerked his chair backwards with a surprising strength and had pulled it towards him, John sitting on it almost like a puppet.

"Why did you even bother to put on clothes," Sherlock mumbled, tugging at John's trousers, the loose comfortable pair, so they gave easily. "Wasting valuable time."

John gave a startled laugh at that, head spinning, scrabbling to catch up – blood was rushing to his cock already, and he worried for a split second about his stamina, having come so intensely twice the day before – once when thinking about having sex with Sherlock and then when _actually _having sex with Sherlock; it didn't seem to be anything Sherlock was concerned with, maybe he didn't know enough about it, but then that seemed impossible, Sherlock not knowing enough about something. He probably just didn't care very much.

"Get this off, you," Sherlock told him calmly, and John complied almost automatically, lifting his hips of the chair and yanking down his trousers, breath catching at the _you_, which was so far from condescending it was impossible to even think of; no, it was reverent, almost. Sherlock took over and pulled his trousers over his ankles, and then roughly tugged John's loose t-shirt over his head. It only took a couple of moments to get completely naked, and it was a shock, as though his defenses had been breached without him even realising it – and well, that was sort of what had happened, wasn't it?

Sherlock dropped fluidly to his knees, with his own particular lanky sort of awkward grace, and John had a moment of intense disbelief at the sight; the clean line of Sherlock's back curving away from him as he lowered his head to John's cock, leaning into his lap, pressing his bare chest against John's knees, parting them a bit, strangely bundled up, too tall for this position, really – and: _ohfuck_, this was definitely something Sherlock had done before. John's brain went silent for a bit as Sherlock's mouth engulfed his cock and took him into the shock of wet heat of it about half-way, licking him to full hardness languidly, running his tongue over the underside of his cock before closing his mouth around it and sliding it down as far as he could take it, and the idea of Sherlock's lips, those impossible, stupidly gorgeous, infuriating lips, wrapped around _his cock _was almost too much, and he could only barely stop himself from thrusting forward into Sherlock's mouth.

Sherlock hummed around his cock in response, prompting a small moan from John; John wasn't sure it was appreciation or a warning not to do that again, but suspected the latter – Sherlock brought his hands up to rest on his hips and exerted a firm grip there, keeping him in place. John tangled a hand in his hair, taking care to not push down on the head of curls, simply wanting the contact as his breath hitched under Sherlock's ministrations. Sherlock moved his mouth up and down his shaft, letting it fall almost out of his mouth as he swirled the head with his tongue, and John hissed in pleasure, electric shocks of pleasure running up his limbs.

"Ah, fuck," he said hoarsely, trying to control his hips, sliding his fingers through the mass of curls on Sherlock's head. Sherlock took him almost completely into his mouth again; he was sucking in earnest now, doing this as he did everything else – thoroughly, energetically, as matter-of-factly as a blowjob could ever be delivered. The sight of his bobbing, curly-haired, dark head coupled with the way he let John's cock slip from his mouth again after a couple of strokes, teasing ever so slightly before running his tongue over the glans with straight-forward artistry, was so breathtaking John's head was reeling.

"Sherlock," he panted, couldn't help the note of _please_ infecting his voice, because _fuck_, he needed _more_; and Sherlock seemed to hear it and the warm, full heat of his mouth returned as he took in John's cock as far as he could, now steadily sucking, in a relentless, deliberate pace.

After long moments of suspended pleasure, his body thrumming, moans falling from his mouth involuntarily, straining helplessly against Sherlock's steadying hands, John felt the familiar tightening in his gut, in his balls; his fingers pressed down slightly in Sherlock's hair as a warning, because it was hard to get anything coherent out in the way of words, though he tried: "Sher–Sherlock – I'm going – stop –"

Sherlock's response was to remove one of his hands from John's hips and to quickly start wanking himself, not stilling his mouth on John's cock; on the contrary, he hummed around him, making sounds that John almost thought could be words kept inside the confines of his mouth, but then he couldn't think anymore, the vibrations rocking him only speeding up the approach of his climax.

"Fuck," John breathed at the realisation that Sherlock wasn't going to stop, and then at one particularly powerful suck he went silent and rigid as he trembled through his orgasm, hips helplessly suspended as he moved against Sherlock's remaining hand, trying to control the shudders propelling him forward, spilling himself inside Sherlock's mouth. Sherlock accepted as much of his come as he could, swallowing tangibly, licked and sucked at him until it was over and John's body slapped back down with the sudden force of doubled gravity. Sherlock's mouth slipped from his cock, the sensation giving him a twinge of thrilling discomfort and overstimulation. He was vaguely aware of Sherlock pressing his forehead into John's thigh, hiding his face, and shuddering through another completely silent, tensed orgasm into his own hand, his hand on John's hip digging painfully into his skin. They sat, panting.

"God, you're going to kill me," John said after a good five seconds, when the fog in his brain had lifted somewhat.

Sherlock lifted his head and looked up at him, one corner of his mouth twitching up, lips deliciously shiny with wetness; the sight gave John an unexpected dirty thrill. "Not my intention," he said breathlessly.

"Glad to hear that I'm of more interest to you alive than as a corpse," John said, passing a hand over his eyes, fighting the urge to laugh, because what was his life, really.

"Necrophilia really isn't something –" Sherlock began, seriously.

"God, no, don't ruin it," John immediately deflected him.

Sherlock leaned his chin on John's thigh and for once, was willing to obey. After a moment, he said, quietly: "It's still here."

"What is?" John asked – blind, huge, almost uncomplicated affection surging through him, as he rested his hand on Sherlock's hair.

"My desire to have sex with you."

"You just sucked me off," John pointed out, a little stupidly. He didn't add the _quite expertly_, because Sherlock hardly needed _more _reason to be smug.

Sherlock rolled his eyes at that, _yes; evidently; you are such an idiot_. "But it's still here."

John had a strange kind of twinge in his stomach. He trailed his fingers down Sherlock's cheek to get his attention, and looked him in the eye. "You want... Something else? More?"

Sherlock considered. "Yes." He added, prompted by something he saw in John's face, though John himself wasn't aware of what it was: "Not necessarily right now. It's just... very new that it doesn't go away. I thought –" He fell silent for a second. "I _feared_ it was just an aberration, and it would go away now, after a second time, but it hasn't." He lifted his head off John's leg and scrabbled up from the floor, stretching himself, apparently completely oblivious to the picture he was presenting John – long, lean lines of chest, hips, smooth thighs, a mess of come spattered on his stomach. John swallowed at the apparent utter lack of concern or awareness Sherlock had for his body. He was just as much at ease naked as clothed. The way he stood there, it wasn't – it just wasn't normal, but then that _was _normal for Sherlock.

"That's good, right?" John ventured, and felt a small apprehension at the possibilities of the answer.

"I – yes." But Sherlock looked confused. His phone, lying forgotten on the table, sounded. Sherlock broke the look between them immediately, leaving John slightly anxious, and picked up the phone. He studied the contents of the text for a moment, then seemed mildly satisfied.

"Case," he said.

"Yard?" John asked.

"No. Website. Not that interesting. A little, though." Sherlock started tapping out a response, looking almost comical, stark naked, still flushed from his orgasm, working out a text calmly. "Can you come?" he asked John without looking at him.

"Yes," John said, then sighed. "Give me a minute, though. I wasn't kidding when I said you'd kill me. I'm not twenty anymore."

Sherlock's eyes flicked to him, and he blinked. "I didn't mean _come _in that –"

John laughed at his startled expression. "A _joke_, Sherlock. Humour."

Sherlock's frown peeled off his face slowly, and there was some relief in his expression as he smiled, small but genuine. "Ah, yes, your sparkling wit. It re-emerges. Glad to see you've recovered."

"I'm not sure that I have, actually," John said and got up with a groan, legs a bit weak. "Do I have time for a shower?"

"I need one more than you do," Sherlock pointed out, focused on his phone again.

"We can – we can share if you want?" John said, hesitantly. It seemed like a new level of intimacy.

Sherlock put his phone on the table and turned to him. He looked unconcerned, but he said, quite decisively: "Okay."

"But no trying to get me off in the shower, okay," John said, to defuse the strange heaviness of the moment. "I wouldn't be able to get up again all day."

"I'll restrain myself," Sherlock said.

–

In the shower, Sherlock kissed him. John realised they hadn't done that yet, despite the blowjob and the orgasms, and it felt good, it felt reassuring that it was Sherlock initiating it; it was a slow slide of lips and water that was less intentional than anything they'd done. Sherlock backed him gently against the tile wall, looming over him, and then pulled back. "John," he said urgently, and managed to both look like a drowned dog and a renaissance painting; with his curls dripping over his forehead, backdropped by the diffuse light of the bathroom filtering in through the blue shower curtain, tinging him darker than he was, and water running down his nose into his mouth, "I don't understand any of this." Then he retreated a bit more, looking caught, as though he hadn't intended to say it. John could easily imagine that he hadn't – it was such a rare thing for Sherlock to acknowledge that something was beyond him that it usually took something quite huge to get him to that point.

John pulled him back into him and wrapped him into a hug on an impulse, and Sherlock didn't resist, a wet expanse of skin pressed against skin. "Neither do I," he replied into Sherlock's neck, truthfully, then hesitated for a second before continuing, "but I do know it's something I... want."

"Yes, yes," Sherlock said, as if impatient, and he was only slightly responsive to the hug, "obviously you want it. And I want it. Which is why I don't understand how... complicated it feels. Is."

The slip between _feels_ and _is_ was the whole thing in a nutshell, John realised – he knew Sherlock had feelings, they manifested themselves all the time, slipping out of the cracks of Sherlock's control, and he really didn't understand how people like Anderson or Donovan sometimes honestly seemed to think that Sherlock was a sociopath. But he also knew that Sherlock had a very peculiar way of handling emotion – he tried to catalogue it like everything else, and tried to explain it away rationally. He saw its nuance, but he wanted to _know it_, bullet point it, almost, get it organised. Obviously, that usually didn't work per the nature of feelings, and those were the times when Sherlock often retreated in himself, sinking into silence or sulking, frustrated at the lack of depth he sometimes achieved when thinking about emotion.

"Don't worry," he said, releasing Sherlock, who drew back with a frown that indicated he didn't have something worked out the way he wanted to, "it'll be fine."

"An inane platitude, how dull," Sherlock mumbled, but he pressed the stern line of his nose into John's slick forehead.

–

In the taxi, he remembered something, and felt for a moment as though he didn't deserve to be a doctor.

"Sherlock?" he ventured.

His companion was focused intently on the screen of his phone, fingers flying, and only barely acknowledged him.

He cleared his throat. "Have you been – you know, _tested_?"

Sherlock's eyes stilled, but he didn't raise them to meet John's eyes. "Ah. Wondered when you'd be asking about that," he said, tone completely even once more, and the jump from _I don't understand any of this _was too abrupt, giving John the equivalent of an emotional whiplash. He even physically reeled a bit from it, from the utter detachment in that voice as Sherlock continued. "I have. A couple of weeks before I came back to London. I am completely clean. And I know you are, too."

John couldn't help it: "How?"

"You're a doctor," Sherlock simply said, veering into vagueness, attention focused on something else.

"How does that prove anything?" John said, going against the instinct that said _just leave him be_ because this actually mattered, a lot, and also because a small – no, quite a large – part of him wanted those eyes on him again, the unwavering focus of the _you_, and the closeness of _I don't understand any of this_.

"Good grief, John," Sherlock muttered, directing the _Christ, John, you know, and if you don't, you don't deserve to_ look at the indifference of his phone screen. "You're a professional. Most of the time you remember about safe sex," he continued, leaving the _except this time _unspoken. "I've found your condom packets strewn all over the flat every time you were dating. But I also know that you didn't use any with Sarah near the end, and though Mary hasn't come over to ours, I think it quite probable that you're not with her, either, since I haven't seen any since we came back to Baker Street; and as a medical professional, I'm more than reasonably sure you wouldn't do that if you hadn't been tested every time, as well as asking your partners to do the same. It fits with your personality."

John closed his eyes at the mention of Mary, and at the complete immobility of her name in Sherlock's mouth.

"Right," he said, not quite sure how to feel about this – Sherlock was right, of course, because he was, infuriatingly, always right, and John _should _have been more aware of what was happening; the fact that Sherlock had been like a whirlwind once more, like a burst of light that eclipsed everything else, was really no excuse at all, and he deserved the small cold point of shame igniting in his chest. The other cold point he wasn't sure he deserved – was he being punished for something? Or was it just this way, again? Was he an idiot for expecting Sherlock to be less volatile in his attentions after the things that had happened between them? "Right," he repeated, trying to find other words and failing.

"Yes, I am," Sherlock said, evenly, and there was nothing about him that was even somewhat warm.

John looked at him, tried to draw him out with his continued presence, with the press of his eyes that he was sure Sherlock was intently aware of, but it didn't work.

"You should be more careful about sex with former drug users, John," Sherlock said after a pause, lightly, still staring at that damn screen, as though it didn't matter at all, really.

"You should be more careful about using drugs," he retorted; the barb was sharp, completely below the belt, and immature, and it stemmed completely from his unsettlement about Sherlock's lack of contact.

But when Sherlock glanced up sharply at that, and his eyes clicked to John's, and there was a moment of naked, breathless, wounded disbelief in them before they narrowed and clouded over with blankness and were flicked back down to the phone, John felt the cold spread throughout his chest and wished that Sherlock hadn't looked at him at all.

"Sherlock," he said, guilt grabbing at his throat, "I didn't – I'm sorry."

Sherlock pressed his thumb to his phone in what John knew to be the 'send' command with exceptional force, but ignored him.

–

"I have to go see Mary," he told Sherlock quietly, when the wife of the deceased had stopped sobbing for a second – she'd been crying for almost half an hour, and Sherlock was growing increasingly abusive, but the woman seemed so upset even Sherlock's annoyance rolled off her like water on wax. John had felt the guilt about Mary accumulating above his head, and if he waited any longer it would topple down on him and he might not even find the strength to go to her – and she'd said that she'd be busy later, so he had to do it now.

Sherlock barely reacted, not taking his eyes off the woman in front of him, his teeth practically bared as he curled his lip at her in distaste. He was smoking, deliberately blowing the smoke into her face. "Now?" he said through clenched teeth.

John felt a flicker of annoyance at the lack of response; surely Sherlock had some clue as to why he was going to Mary's, and even if he didn't know the full emotional scope of what John would have to do John still wanted some form of support from him, almost in spite of himself. "Well, yes," he said, "I have to –"

But underneath his annoyance Sherlock's face was clouded over with the blankness that John knew well, and hated so. He fell silent at seeing it. Nothing was really registering with Sherlock right now, except the case and the obstacles to its solution – the wife being the biggest obstacle, being in the way, being such an unnecessary, deeply annoying distraction.

"Okay," Sherlock said, uninflected, "I'll meet you back at home."

"Sherlock," John tried again; to get a point of contact, to say _I'm sorry about what I said_ or just to say, honestly, _I want you to look at me_.

"Go. I'll finish up here. It's quite obvious he's just faked his death and ran off with his secretary anyway. Boring. Disappointing," Sherlock said icily, and the woman burst into tears anew. Sherlock eyed her, face contorted with a cold distaste.

"I – okay," John eventually relented, feeling strange about his need to get more of a response. Sherlock wouldn't turn to him, and the pressure of _Mary_grew even more, so he had to go now; though he worried about about what the mental state of the woman in front of them would be after Sherlock had finished with her. "Take it easy," he therefore said, but Sherlock offered nothing, absolutely nothing in response, and John felt distinctly uneasy as he left him to it.

–

On his way to Mary, Ian texted him. It felt as though normality had remembered his existence and had come knocking for a bit to break the spell of the past days, that had been Sherlock, Sherlock, and only Sherlock, relentlessly eclipsing everything and everyone else. He felt a stab of guilt when he remembered that Ian would have been going through quite a rough patch, and John hadn't been there for him at all.

_We missed you at the session,  
doctor sir. Want to get a pint  
tomorrow? Peanuts will be  
seasoned by our tears. Might  
get Bill to come too, Sharon's  
busy.  
Ian_

He considered. Then realised with a mild shock that he wanted to ask Sherlock if it was okay – and that was, once more, Sherlock shifting the balance way more than he should, but now it seemed like he had more of a right, now that he'd finally filled in all of the places that John had already mentally awarded him in his life. _Lover_, joining the ranks of _friend_ and _flatmate_ and _infuriating wanker_ and _inspiration_. Christ, it was breath-taking, the speed with which it had all hit him. Still, he felt like it was much too early for that, and he needed to maintain something of the outside world, a rock to hang onto in the push and pull of the tide that was Sherlock, so he sent back

_Sure, you pathetic pushover.  
Tell me when & where.  
Sorry about the session, it's  
just been a bit crazy.  
J_

Then, he stared out at London flashing past the window for a bit, recalling how Sherlock had just swooped in with sex, twice now, and had been the only thing he could see for a while; even before Sherlock's fall he'd sometimes worried about the extent to which he moulded himself to Sherlock's moods and whims, and this was really no different, though he couldn't say that he had especially minded, in this case. Still, it had been shocking. He closed his eyes against the glare of the city in the bright sunlight, trying to feel like a separate entity, John Watson, not just the Watson of Holmes-and-Watson, and found it a bit difficult. Even now he was thinking of what Sherlock might be putting that poor woman through, and how distant he'd been, before, in the cab, and the way he'd looked almost hurtfully uninterested in where John was going; it never would have registered that way with John before, but now that he'd been leaving Sherlock to go break up with Mary because Sherlock had stepped in and had tangled all of the lines that he'd put out to connect other people to him, it felt absolutely unfair that Sherlock didn't even offer him a flicker of support, of comfort, of some certainty that he was doing the right thing.

Though he did feel like the past days had brought him closer to Sherlock than he'd been, well, ever, or at least since Sherlock had come back, even more enigmatic than before, with more blind spots – he still didn't feel like he had any real grasp on his friend, his infuriating friend, and now his infuriating lover, who was just as much of an overthrowing force as every other role Sherlock had ever played. The small glimpse of uncertainty in the shower had hinted at something that was playing out on a deeper level, but John didn't doubt that he'd have to play this game with subtlety to get Sherlock to offer it up to him. The taxi ride had been a painful indication of that.

He sighed. Who was he, to choose this? To choose this over something as steady and good and healthy and inherently satisfying as his relationship with Mary? An extremely strange co-dependent gay relationship with his insane flatmate, who had a nonchalance about him that could be very damaging to anyone who allowed themselves to care about him, and an intensity about exactly the wrong things in social connections, who picked and chose his way through emotion and threw away what didn't suit him, who'd put him through a grieving process from hell and still didn't seem to fully understand the scope of that. What did it say about Sherlock's mental processes that he had honestly thought it would be better for John to not know that he was still alive? It felt like playing with – not even fire, but more like a bomb, that had been wired to confuse anyone who tried to defuse it.

There was so much to worry about here. _Co-dependent_; well, yes, there was no denying it, when he was with Sherlock everything else muted to background noise and when he wasn't, Sherlock still occupied too much of his conscience – or at least, and maybe this made it even worse, _dependent_, as he in all honesty didn't know if Sherlock had the same kind of sometimes over-sized, startlingly big feelings for John as John had for him. _Gay_; John had never seriously thought that this label applied to him, but he couldn't deny that coming in Sherlock's mouth was extremely gay, and what did it mean, really, maybe it didn't have to mean all that much, but it felt wrong, naïve at the very least, to think that he could still consider himself completely straight while being this attracted to a man, even if it was only really one man. _Insane_; Sherlock had in general quite a good grasp on his personal brand of unhinged-ness, which really wasn't sociopathy, but a combination of maybe something of an autism spectrum disorder with a deep unwillingness or, maybe, incapability to put his otherwise extremely detailed social observation into practice, and a clumsiness with emotion that was mostly born out of a lack of experience with it – in any case he could be very unpredictable, and though the past weeks had been relatively calm, John knew that his explosivity was likely still lurking beneath a veneer of temporary quiet. _Relationship_; he really didn't know if it was, he had no idea what any of this was, really, and he had no grasp whatsoever on what relationships of any kind even meant to Sherlock on a deeper level and what kind of rules, if any, he expected them to follow.

And then he hadn't even started on the sex – what did it mean for Sherlock, really? Did it mean anything at all that Sherlock had been topping John from the beginning, even when he'd been beneath him – choosing their rhythm, practically delivering John's orgasm with that voice, that _you_ that was so incredibly thrilling and confusing? John's fantasies had often included Sherlock relinquishing some of the control that he had over John in almost every other aspect of their life; but it hadn't played out that way, and what was he to make of the fact that at least for now, the sex fell into exactly the same pattern they had in everything else? It was both extremely arousing and a little unsettling how aggressive Sherlock had been that morning, and after years of not even having been sure that Sherlock _had _sexual desires, John felt like he needed a little time to get to grips with a Sherlock who said that putting on clothes was a waste of valuable time that could have been spent sucking John's cock – but if there was one thing that life was short on, it was time to get to grips with things Sherlock Holmes did, unless it was jumping off a roof, and then there was too much time to get through, a frozen, sluggish reservoir of time, an endless supply that didn't offer anything of use at all.

Christ. What was his life? From unexpected blowjobs at breakfast to getting in a cab to break up with a woman he'd honestly thought he could love but who he'd cheated on twice now, almost without a second thought, what was his life?

–

Mary's smile was guarded as she let him in. The air between them was already full of finality, John imagined uneasily, though it wasn't fair of him to assume that she felt it too. She couldn't possibly know what had been happening to him in the last 24 hours, she couldn't know that the fragile orbit of his universe that had first, with horrible effort, re-built itself to suit a world without Sherlock, and then had to re-construct itself to hold a world _with_ Sherlock again, had now been smashed a third time, and was only beginning to take the shadow of a shape around a world in which Sherlock sucked his cock at the breakfast table. And he stood still in her hallway for a moment, feeling himself to be an utter bastard, and feeling life to be so immensely skewed, and lop-sided; taking people away and then giving them back, wreaking more havoc than anyone could imagine, giving him of all people a new chance of mythical proportion, randomly, without deserving it more than anyone else, and then pulling cruel tricks on people like Mary, who were profoundly undeserving of it. As he finished the thought, he took it back – it was _him _who was playing the cruel trick, really, even though it felt like it had been a pre-determined sequence of events; he'd handled it in possibly the worst way imaginable, and that was still his responsibility, even after the insistence, the unstoppability of Sherlock.

He looked at her; blonde, small, beautiful, with an easy, attractive grace, and with a deep and genuine warmth that had drawn him to her like a starving man to a banquet. And that was it then, really – she'd filled his hunger from the outside, but Sherlock _was_ his hunger, burned in him from within, gave him the energy to find his own sustenance, a life that he really, truly wanted and was deeply afraid of at the same time.

"So, what happened yesterday?" she asked as she passed him a cup of coffee. They were sitting on her couch, the couch on which they'd shagged often enough, but now with a space between them what was wider than usual in not just a psychological sense. She was keeping her distance.

He grimaced. The most truthful thing to say would be _Sherlock happened_, but he felt the pressure to narrativise it more, to give her something that she could turn into something useful for herself. "Scotland Yard rang us up for a case, and in all the excitement... It slipped my mind. I'm sorry," he said, and it wasn't even untrue.

She nodded slowly. "What was the case?"

He was a bit surprised at that, but said: "An apparent murder-suicide. Turned out to be a double murder; the wife's lover killed her and the husband."

She nodded, seeming interested. "Sounds fascinating."

"Yes, it was, actually," he said, recalling how Sherlock had hovered over the bodies, trailing his fingertips over their silence, their bodily statements, the lines of their physicality being the only way they could still speak from beyond that misty boundary they'd crossed – they were lucky, in a sense, to have Sherlock there to capture their final words. Christ, it had only been yesterday, but it seemed like an ocean now lay between that moment and this one, an undiscovered depth teeming with hidden life; space and time curving away from each other, creating a new kind of time, moments in which Greg had said _I love both of you_ and Sherlock had called him a microscope, moments in which Sherlock had growled _you _in his ear, prompting his orgasm, moments in which Sherlock had licked his neck in his sleep, sampling him, collecting him.

"So they needed Sherlock," Mary said, her eyes still slightly wary, but she seemed to relax – and he realised that she'd already at least half-way accepted his apology.

"Well, yes," he said, swallowing down the _I'm actually sometimes useful, too_.

She looked at him. "John, I'm okay with you going with him, you know." She took a breath. "You've told me enough about the life you used to have together; don't think that I didn't pick up that you missed it terribly. I'm happy to hear that you get to do that again, because it's obvious that you love it."

He frowned.

"I would have liked some communication, though," she said, calmly, and then took a sip of her coffee – milk, sugar, Mary, milk, sugar, Mary.

"Yeah, I... I know," he said, "I'm sorry. There's no excuse for forgetting about it."

"I forgive you, you silly man," she said warmly because she was wonderful, reaching over to grab his hand, meaning to restore the bridge between them, and that's when something snapped in him; the fragile barriers upholding the weight of his guilt snapped, and it tumbled over him like an avalanche.

He closed his eyes, trying to contain his turmoil to the inside of his skull. When he opened them again, she looked deeply startled; she'd obviously seen something that was extremely troubling in the way his face had folded in on itself.

"Mary," he said, and it was almost a gasp, as he tried to breathe under the crush of his _why am I such a bastard, why_.

"What?" she said, her gaze darkening with suspicion.

"I'm sorry," he said, and then knew that if he owed her anything, it was the truth. "I can't keep on seeing you. I've – I've done something terrible."

She waited, offering him nothing, and he couldn't blame her for that, because what was he offering her, after all? Her hand was inching back in her own direction, putting the distance back in place, fortifying her own boundaries against him. He pushed on, and picked the most comprehensible, straight-forward thing from the list of terrible things he'd done: "I've slept with someone."

She was silent for a moment, the surprise moving over her face slowly, then crumbling into a deep disappointment. "Someone," she repeated, and from her tone he could tell that she knew, already.

But it was his place to say it. "Sherlock," he said, his throat almost too tight to get the name out, with its echoes, with its traces, with so many things attached to it.

She didn't cry. She didn't scream. In the five months that he'd been with her, he'd come to know her as a strong, solid person, with a steady, reliable personality, a wonderful human being with an honest, true self-awareness and appreciation for herself. She was all that and more as she stood up from the sofa, and fixed him with a firm gaze, only wavering slightly. She was breathing rapidly, and pressed her hand against her chest – trying to get it under control, trying to get the emotions pushing at her body back in line, because he could see her thinking it, and he really couldn't argue: _he doesn't deserve it_.

"I should have seen it coming," she said, and she didn't even sound bitter, there was a resigned sort of wonder in her voice. "The way you talked about him... Even a year and a half after his death..."

"I'm so sorry," he said, and meant it – not that he loved Sherlock, not that he'd slept with Sherlock, because there was just no way that he could ever be sorry about that, no matter how uprooting, how wildly confusing it was; but sorry that he hadn't been better through all of this, sorry that he had tried to hang onto normality while he already knew that it wasn't what he wanted, in the end, sorry that he'd tried to tell himself that it was good the way it was, to her detriment. What he was sorry for was that he had hurt her, but that was such an arsehole thing to say that he didn't even try.

She made a small noise that could have meant many different things. "Were you two together before his death?" she then asked, sharply, towering over him, resembling Sherlock for a split moment of insanity, and then not anymore, not at all, not even close. Mary. Milk, sugar, Mary.

"No," he simply said, and it was the truth even if it was only one per cent of it, and hoped that she could tell that he wasn't lying; though there was no reason for her to assume that anything he'd ever told her wasn't a lie. She seemed to accept it, though, nodding to herself.

"But you are now," she said, fist pressing into the patch of skin under which her heart was presumably hammering away. Blood pressure. Stress. Pulse. None of that breaking nonsense, but the heart working even harder to keep itself together under the weight of life.

He had a moment's confusion where he didn't know what to tell her, but none of it could mean anything to her, so he chose the route of least resistance: "Yes."

"And you love him," she said, and then seemed to lose some of her self-control, and clapped her arms around herself, as though needing the support of her own body. Her eyes were shining with tears, now, but they didn't fall.

There was a silence that he couldn't bring himself to fill, because the _yes, I do _was already too strong, too painful. "I'll go," he said eventually, because the words that he could think of that had any meaning had run out; he felt something in him smart bitterly at the loss of her despite himself. The break between them was too sharp, too jagged; they had been two people who had fit together remarkably well in several ways, and now there were only harsh edges where there had been soft curves rolling into each other. God, he was terrible.

"Yes," she agreed, voice constricted, though she looked as though she wanted to say more, maybe. Maybe _you're an arsehole_ or maybe _how could you do this to me_. The silence of her said all of those things just as well, though. He was good at reading the things people who weren't Sherlock didn't say. And it was just like her to have this be the easiest break-up conversation he'd ever had; because it had been the easiest relationship he'd ever had, too, the most steady one, the one on which he had been able to build without having to worry about the firmness of her foundation. It made it all the more bitter, this objectively good break-up – they went well together, even when breaking up.

At the door, she told him, seemingly in spite of herself: "I'll miss you."

And he would have said _so will I _and it would have been true, it would have been true in an uncomplicated way that not a lot of other things were nowadays, but he knew that that wouldn't help, not at all, not even a little bit; so he decided not to burden her with his regrets, because she had no place to put them in anymore.

"Goodbye, Mary," he said instead, watching her close the door on a part of his life that now seemed so remote it was like looking at it through the wrong end of a spyglass.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

_Sherlock?_

He tried hard not to remember the dozens of times he'd typed this in the first, upturned weeks after Sherlock's jump, sending it to a number that, when dialled, cheerfully, extremely un-Sherlock-like, told him _this number is no longer in use. Please re-dial_ whenever he tried to call it, emerging from dreams where Sherlock told him to contact him, because _a magic trick, John_. He tried hard not to remember how he'd always only barely been able to see it, eyes hard and dry and stinging as he looked at the name, at its question mark, throwing it down an abyss of nothing, not even getting an echo back, just the static of the deep, dark sleep of death.

Things had changed, after all.

_Fine.  
SH_

And then, a bit more tangible:

_Asinine case.  
SH_

He breathed a sigh of relief he didn't know he'd been holding.

_I'm sorry about what I said  
before. I'll be home asap._

Sherlock didn't respond, but the coil of guilt (of guilts entwined; of Sherlock, of Mary, of himself) in him loosened a bit nonetheless.

And then he was pissed off for another bit, at Sherlock, at Mary, at himself. Mostly at Sherlock, though.

God, why couldn't he just shout at him like he could before? Why was there this uncrossable depth between them nowadays?

–

When he was about to slide his key into the lock of 221B, he stopped for a moment, and examined himself mentally – skull ribs arms hips knees toes brain heart liver blood skin scar limp. Strange how he was still in one piece, really, even after all that living. He realised he felt like crying.

He quickly turned the key in the lock and slipped inside, needing to get out of the open battlefield of the street and into the sanctuary that was home, even if it was a peculiar war zone of a sanctuary; the dangers contained here were ones that he loved, so that was okay.

Sherlock was composing. The sounds drifted down the hallway to meet him. The same trill of notes – one, two, three – then the same thing again, then a pause, and again – one, two, three – a glissando, a new note, another pause. Then a more complete sequence; something vaguely melancholy, ending on a note of dissonance, beautiful, a bit painful. John frowned. Composing often meant emotionally compromised, and extremely unapproachable.

He scaled the stairs, trying to beat down apprehension.

Sherlock was standing upright in the sofa, dressed in his pyjama trousers and his dressing gown, which was hanging open, revealing his chest, and a sliver of scars. His eyes were closed as he swept the bow over the strings; he hummed along with the notes, shaping them into what he wanted them to be. A half-filled composition sheet was lying on the ground. He didn't quite respond to John's entrance, and started again – notes, one, two, three, four, and then a new stretch, improvised, following the lead of his voice, which had an unsurprisingly clear, deep, warm timbre. Sherlock singing. Another thing to add to the list of _things that never used to happen, and now do_.

He didn't look unhappy, though, and John was relieved; he knew how absorbed Sherlock could get into his music when it struck at the right time, so he buried his growing need for some emotional comfort – an unpredictable commodity with Sherlock even at the best of times – and said nothing to jerk his flatmate from his reverie, instead hanging his coat on its hook. He stood for a moment, looking at the way the sleeves of his coat touched Sherlock's, trying to think of something that he could do, something tangible enough, something that took up enough time to allow him to get a grip on the feelings and the thoughts that had passed over him in the past hours. The washing up presented itself as a possibility of potentially horrible proportions.

He went over to the kitchen and turned the hot water tab, mentally preparing himself for what might be growing between the dishes and teacups of days.

He'd almost finished, feeling more and more affected by the strange, ethereal beauty of Sherlock's composition, all the while struggling valiantly with some fungus growth Sherlock had cultivated in a series of petri dishes and had then unceremoniously dumped into the sink after they'd proven to have a completely normal, boring development, and feeling ridiculously as though getting it clean would mean something significant for the state of his life, when Mrs. Hudson knocked on the door frame of the open door.

"Whoo-hoo!" she said happily.

Sherlock stopped playing immediately – not that deep into the music then, after all, or at least not as deep as that time John had found him playing inside the shower in the middle of the night for some reason, now so long ago, a lifetime ago (literally: Sherlock's lifetime), and he had feared for a moment that Sherlock had overdosed on something he couldn't identify, because he had been trembling with an absurd kind of mania and wouldn't respond, and could only play, glowing with a kind of otherworldly light; and then it hadn't been drugs at all, just the music, only the music, as Sherlock had tried to explain to him the next day, uncharacteristically awkward, the music taking over the full top track of his mind, growing so strong that it actually, for some rare, fleeting, magical moments, took over from everything else. It had been a thing of exceptional and terrifying beauty to behold, really, but John had only been able to see it happen that one time.

"Hello!" he called out to her, somewhat glad to have someone near who would have more of a grasp on normal, small communication than Sherlock, the wanker. He hadn't spoken to Mrs. Hudson in a while, and she hadn't been up to see them as often as she'd used to, he realised; maybe she, too, wasn't quite believing yet of what was happening up in 221B, maybe she too had some trouble confronting the ghosts of lives past head-on. She poked her head around the corner and smiled widely at him as a hello.

"Parcel for you, Sherlock dear," she then said, turning to face Sherlock, waving about said package, a small, battered thing wrapped in clumsy cardboard, kept together by a piece of unravelling string. There were several stamps and prints on it, as though it had passed through many hands and many borders.

Sherlock jumped off the couch lightly, and took the parcel from her with a silly kind of flourish, bowing down to kiss her hand to prompt the scandalised giggles he loved. John smiled in spite of himself, happy to see, once more, the kind of playfulness Sherlock had always reserved for Mrs. Hudson; but as Sherlock looked over the package John saw his face tighten, and he went with it into his bedroom without a further word. John watched him go, shaking his head.

"Some tea, then, Mrs. Hudson?" John asked from the kitchen, still scrubbing at a particularly resistant spot of fungus.

"Thank you, dear," she said, and then, as naturally as she always had, began to make the tea herself, bringing a smile to John's face.

"I can do it for you, you know," he said, but she waved it away briskly, tsk-ing as though he'd suggested something absolutely scandalous – he had a brief moment of slightly hysterical internalised amusement when he realised that it might be her reaction, too, if he told her _Sherlock and I have discovered the joys of sex with each other, finally having succumbed to society's opinion of what we should do_. God, he felt like he needed to tell someone soon, just to get it to become something that was a reality, not a strange mix-up of fantasy that could prove imagined at any minute.

"Nonsense, love," she said, "you're busy cleaning up Sherlock's mess, so I can make the tea."

He eyed her, gratitude surfacing inside him at someone appreciating what he was doing; she looked back kindly. He relinquished the effort of dominating the fungus, refusing to think of it as another apt metaphor for his life, before taking a seat at the table and clearing off some of Sherlock's chemical equipment.

"And how have you been lately?" he asked her.

"Oh, the usual," she trilled cheerfully, "nothing that would excite the two of you, I expect."

"I don't know, sometimes a little _less _excitement sounds like it would be something that we could use around here."

Mrs. Hudson handed him his mug of tea with a raised-eyebrows look that said _for you, maybe, but not for the other person in this flat_. He acknowledged the truth in it with a smile.

"It _has _been a bit quiet around here these past weeks, though, hasn't it?" she asked him, stirring in sugar.

"Yes, I... I suppose it has," he said, allowing himself to look over at the closed border of Sherlock's bedroom door. It _had _been calm, almost eerily so, apart from that time he'd shouted abuse at Sherlock and that time they'd had sex on the couch, he thought wryly.

"I'm so pleased he could convince you to come back here, dear," she said when he'd refocused on her, more seriously. "The first two days without you here were as bad as any I've known."

"Oh?"

"Oh, yes," she said with what seemed like a small shiver, "screaming all night. Banging on the walls for hours on end. I don't know what he was up to. I was a bit afraid to come up the first morning."

He blinked at her.

"He apologised, though," she said, and her face clearly said _that was even more terrifying_. "Said something about nightmares." She shook her head, sadly. "Who really knows what's happened to him, after all." He looked at her. They hadn't had a lot of contact in the years of Sherlock's absence; she'd called him occasionally and had come to see him a couple of times (as he felt completely unequipped to come see _her_, deeply unwilling to know of a Baker Street without Sherlock Holmes), bearing always some comfort in pastry form. He'd shared with her, carefully, a very small piece of his grief, and she had understood in her intuitive way that there was so much more, but had never probed. Now he remembered that she, too, had lost Sherlock, and she, too, had regained him – and presumably she, too, was still finding ways to get him to be an active, living part of her life again. She took a sip of her tea, and then said when she saw his look of – he supposed – growing apprehension: "It hasn't happened since, dear, don't worry. You've always had a calming influence on him."

He fiddled with his mug. Did he, really? Sherlock _had_ been more subdued these past weeks than he'd ever known him, and since that first morning when he'd come out of his bedroom to find Sherlock sitting next to the door, his sleeping pattern had been closer to normal than ever before. Nothing like the things she was describing had happened; or if they had, they'd been much quieter. Sherlock didn't even argue as much when John fixed him food. So maybe, yes. But he couldn't help but feel like it was a deceptive calm that Sherlock was hiding behind, shielding himself off from forces that he couldn't handle yet, and that it was bound to break at one point. He didn't quite know what to do with the information that she was giving him – what nightmares could be so bad that they had Sherlock not shouting, but actually screaming, and banging the wall, not once, like he often did when he was bored or frustrated, but for hours? How could John ever really help, if he didn't know what was taking place in that gorgeous, brilliant, so horribly closed off head of Sherlock's? God, what had _happened _to him?

She noted his preoccupation, and patted his hand lightly. "You're doing great," she said, and at that he felt such a powerful rush of love for her that he had to close his eyes for a second.

"Thank you," he finally managed to get out.

"You're welcome, dear," and it was so sincere that he grabbed her frail old-lady hand and squeezed it in a way that was bound to be uncomfortable for her.

They drank the rest of their tea in a nice kind of silence. When she finally got up to go back downstairs, he said: "Come up anytime," and he thought it might have been relief in her eyes he saw as she nodded.

–

Sherlock came back into the living room shortly after Mrs. Hudson had left, but only gave John a small impression of a smile that revealed absolutely nothing as he went over to grab his violin and his laptop, and then went back to his room, shutting the door behind him with what seemed like intentional softness. John realised he hadn't said a word since John had come home.

–

Sherlock didn't emerge from his room all evening, which was something that had never happened before in all the time John had known him. The unfamiliar silence in his bedroom was occasionally punctuated by bursts of music, pieces John recognised as well as new, unfinished swells of sound, still in the process of being composed. When John finally couldn't stand it anymore and went over to knock on his door, he responded, calmly: "I'm busy, John."

And that was it.

He was furious, but did nothing, apart from throwing his phone at Sherlock's door, which didn't help at all, and prompted no reaction whatsoever. He cursed at himself for not daring to be more insistent, for not saying _hey, tosser, I'm your friend and I need you right now_ or _fuck you and come talk to me, I just broke up with my girlfriend for you_; he would have before, before – before _everything_, before Sherlock had jumped off a roof, before John had spent two years swirling to the bottom of life and had had to brave so many different tides in order to swim back up, before Sherlock had turned the sky into the ground and the other way around by coming back, before Sherlock had pulled him down and had shared with him his mouth and then his body in such a way that it hadn't actually felt like sharing.

John switched on the telly, and stared at it unseeingly for about half an hour, redness clouding his vision, before he decided that he couldn't be between these walls for a bit and went out for a walk.

He felt fearful, now, the anger dissipating without a Sherlock to react to. What he feared, he wasn't sure. Sherlock, shutting the door on him so literally, so effectively. Himself, who didn't seem to have the bollocks to bring down that door. Himself, who really felt like he might have let something happen to him that could break him, break him all over again, after all the time he had needed to come back together as a person. Himself, who'd gone and broken up with Mary without having even the slightest reassurance that what had happened between him and Sherlock was a real thing, a thing that would be repeated, that could grow and evolve – right now it seemed like so long ago that Sherlock had looked at him and said: _I don't understand any of this_, and there had been no real obstacles between them but the easily parted curtain of shower water.

He went on a long walk, passing familiar streets and buildings that he'd avoided for a long time, and they seemed to only cement the feeling that he was going backwards into the past.

He felt a confusing, guilty desire to text Mary. But then didn't, of course, because he'd been more than enough of a wanker to her for today. Probably for more than today. A lot more.

He sighed and texted Ian instead:

_Looking forward to that pint  
tomorrow. Feels like I really  
need it.  
J_

He could almost hear Ian's wry voice in the swift response:

_Me too, doctor sir. Me too.  
Ian_

He hovered outside of Sherlock's bedroom for a long moment when he came back, feeling somewhat refreshed by the tangibility of the city in spite of everything, as he tried to squash the helpless desire to go in and ask if they could sleep in the same bed again tonight. There was nothing about Sherlock that had suggested that he would want to, and the blankness of his door was a silent statement in itself. Or felt like it, at least.

He padded up the stairs to his bedroom with that feeling of stretched-out-ness again, a John Watson without backstory, nothing but a name in a silly romance novel; a bit angry, a bit hurt, but most of all: a lot honestly sad, and then: worried about the fact that he felt honestly sad where before, he would have felt miffed, annoyed, rightfully ticked off at Sherlock for being such an annoying prat; he would have felt anything but this deep, horrible feeling of inadequacy.

–

And because Sherlock wasn't up when he came to the breakfast table, and because the entirety of his shift at the clinic was filled with a constant, feverish, somewhat belated intrusion of _John Watson, you had sex with Sherlock Holmes_, he finally gave in and texted Greg. Greg, who he thought of all his friends to be the one who'd understand this most – the one who knew him at the time of Sherlock's death, had seen him at his worst, at his deepest, at his most exposed, when the _Greg I just love him I love him I love him and now he's gone oh fuck Greg what am I going to do whatamigoingtodonow _just came out without him having any control over it.

_You're not going to believe this  
(or maybe you are) but Sherlock  
and I slept together. I'm not sure  
what's happening.  
J_

He stared at the text for a long moment before sending it, trying to imagine if it wasn't a total overstepping of the boundaries he had with Greg. Surely _I shagged him_ was far less shocking than _I loved him_, but then, people thought about sex in different ways.

But it was Greg, who was wonderful, so the response was:

_I'm at the office. Come over  
whenever you want, the team  
can handle the shit that's  
going on here right now.  
Greg_

He told Sarah it was an emergency, and, well, it didn't even feel like it was much of a lie. It was a pretty slow day, anyway, and she let him go without much of a fight.

He wasn't sure what he could say, really, apart from _what the fuck is even going on_, but he felt like just talking to Greg would provide a point of quiet in the volatility of the past days.

–

"So?" Greg said, instead of hello, leaning back in his chair, legs propped up on the paperwork on his desk.

John dropped into the chair opposite him heavily.

"I don't even know," he said.

Greg eyed him, one eyebrow inching up. "You're not happy."

"I – no," John shook his head.

Greg swung his legs off his desk and leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand. "Why not?" As always, the question was innocent, hiding so much more; in this case _I thought you'd be ecstatic after all of the angst and unrequited love and terrible regrets that he'd died before you could tell him that you loved him and wanted to fuck him all along. So, what happened?_

"Because he's being a wanker about it," John said, and finally, there it was, that familiar, somehow comforting feeling of annoyance at Sherlock that he'd apparently misplaced in the chaos of his brain.

Greg blinked. "He shagged you and then kicked you out of bed or something?"

John shook his head, because that wasn't exactly how it had gone down.

Greg's expression turned pained. "Don't tell me he's suddenly a complete sap, bringing you breakfast in bed or something like that."

John shook his head again, and couldn't help the giggle at the image. "No. No, thank God. That's about the only thing that would be worse."

"What, then?"

"Just... Not talking," John said.

Greg eyed him. "And this is new in what way?"

"It's new in that he's never not talked after having had sex with me," John said, heatedly.

Greg's somewhat mocking expression slid off and was replaced with something more serious, as though he only now realised what John was saying. "I... Yeah. I guess that's a bit more upsetting."

John sighed. "And the thing is, he... he actually _did_ talk. Yesterday morning we had a whole conversation, and he said that... well, he said that it was something he wanted." He decided not to mention the _and then he sucked me off just for good measure_. "And then we had this small stupid case that really annoyed him, and I was gone for a bit, and now he's completely retreated into himself. I just... I have no clue how to reach him."

Greg looked at him with his familiar subdued, shrewd expression. "You're insecure."

"Yeah," John admitted, "normally I'd just tell him he's being a prick and he'd accept it and we'd shout at each other for a bit, or talk, or not talk and go have Chinese, whatever, and it would all work out fine, but now... I dunno."

"There's more at stake," Greg filled in.

"Yeah," John agreed quietly.

"Punch him," Greg said after a moment.

John blinked.

"I'm serious. Punch him. You still need to get that out of your system. Punch him and see what he does then."

John licked his lips. "Greg, I'm not going to just deck him because he's not talking to me. For all I know he's actually going through something rough."

"All the more reason to remind him that you're there," Greg said, and he looked completely serious. "I'm telling you. Punch him. It helps."

"Are you speaking out of experience?" John asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes," Greg said. "Don't know if you know this, but I met him on a crime scene, wandering around totally coked up, high out of his skull. The most sociable I've ever seen him." He gave a wry smile. "Got himself arrested, of course, for disrupting police work and insulting everyone. Chased him all over fucking London to get a hold of him after it turned out that he was right about who the murderer was. He was half insane, coming down from another high, totally unresponsive in any meaningful way – so I punched him. It got his attention." He looked pleased with himself.

John chewed this over. It wasn't quite surprising, with what he'd pieced together from the scraps of information about Sherlock's drug use that he'd been handed by Mycroft and Greg, but it was still an impossible thing to imagine – Sherlock out of his own control, riding the waves of something that wasn't just himself. His stomach twinged unpleasantly as he tried to picture it. He shook his head. "Not quite the same situation, though, wouldn't you say?"

"Of course not. But I've done it a couple of times more, later, when he was clean – whenever he goes into that crazy state of his where he actually, honestly doesn't remember that other people are human too." He looked at John for a moment. "Those are usually the times when he's most vulnerable himself, and then he likes to forget that other people can be, too, so he can be an absolute nightmare to them and they won't figure it out."

And that was rather insightful, so John thought it over for a bit.

"I dunno," he said.

"It's just advice," Greg said, sounding unconcerned but hardly looking it. Then he leaned in a bit more and fixed John with a firm gaze. "How did it happen? Not that I want details," he added, though he sounded keen.

"Um," John said, and then thought _fuck it, fuck all of it_, "I guess we were both pretty drunk."

Greg blinked. "God, I knew it," he said, "I knew something was going to happen that night."

"You were drunk, too, Greg," John countered, feeling a blush creeping up his face. He wanted to add _you even said you loved both of us, remember_, but then didn't, because that was so okay it didn't even need to be repeated, it was so true, and it was Greg, the quiet, strong force that had kept Sherlock sane for so long and then had done exactly the same for John when Sherlock had died, and it just really wasn't something to make fun of.

"Not too drunk to feel the tension between you two. More crackling than usual, and that's saying something." His face rearranged into a grin. "Fuck, I knew it. Drunken shagging? I'd never taken Sherlock for the type."

John winced slightly. "Me neither, but here I am."

"And was it him who... You know?"

"Yes," John said, and there must have been something in his voice that prompted Greg's grin to widen even more – maybe the feverishness of his memory of Sherlock pulling him in was shining through in his expression.

But after a minute, Greg's smile wilted. "I'm sorry it didn't work out the way you wanted it to," he then said, sincerely.

"I brought it on myself," John shrugged.

"Would you have said no if you knew this would happen?" Greg asked him, leaning back and putting his feet back up.

"No," John said, immediately.

"Good," Greg said, "good."

"I just... don't know what he wants from this," John said after a moment, and it felt like a confession.

Greg sighed. "Who the hell knows what he wants from anything? But I can tell you this, John –" and he gave John a meaningful look from under his lashes, "– he cares a whole fuckload more about you than about anyone else."

That was true. John knew it was true. It helped, a little. They sat in a contemplative silence for a little while, before John said: "I'm just sort of glad I got to tell someone. Makes it feel a whole lot more like it actually happened."

Greg nodded in sympathy, then said: "For what it's worth, you two are the most fucked-up, weird, incomprehensible couple I can think of, but also the most meant-to-be. In my opinion."

John snorted. "Me and Sherlock meant to be? God."

"Yeah, actually," Greg said, quite seriously. "During that first case, you remember, with that insane serial killer cabbie; when we were doing that drugs bust in his flat, and he was insulting all of us high and low, and you'd only been around for, what was it, a day... And you asked for clarification and he actually _gave it_, without further comment – I thought then: these blokes should marry each other."

John laughed, he couldn't help it.

"And I've thought that loads of times over the years," Greg continued, mouth quirking into a smile at John's laugh. "Most recent time when he called you a microscope that evening. Must be the nicest thing I've ever heard him say about anyone."

John fell silent at that, and mulled it over for a second. "Yeah, I – I think it might be, actually."

There was a knock at the door. Donovan came in and gave John a tentative smile, which he half-heartedly returned, more out of habit than sincerity.

"Corpse in South London," she said, "passion crime, most likely. They want you to come check it out."

"All right," Greg said, and swung his legs down. John got up.

Before John left, Greg clapped his shoulder and said, with emphasis: "Punch him." Donovan quirked an eyebrow, probably aware that they were talking about Sherlock, but said nothing.

And John, feeling a bit small and a bit big and a bit everything, smiled weakly and left them to it. It took him half the walk to realise that Greg hadn't asked about Mary, and he felt grateful for that in a guilty way, remembering how Greg's wife used to cheat on him before they'd divorced. Fuck, Greg was a good friend.

–

Ian came into the pub a bit later than they'd said; John had already ordered a pint for him.

"Hi, doctor sir," he said warmly.

John smiled. "Hey Ian. You look less like one of my patients than last time."

Ian shrugged. "I feel a bit better."

John smiled at him, genuinely very happy to hear it. "No Bill, then?"

"No, he had this thing of his daughter's... School play or something."

"Good," John said, because Bill had once told him that if there was anything he felt guilty for, it was having to struggle so hard to take a genuine interest in his children through the apathy of his depression. As a single father that had to be one of the most difficult things he had to juggle, as well as an apparently extremely fraught relationship with his ex-wife, and, of course, the blankness left behind by a true best friend – the only part, really, to which John could relate.

"I hope he restrains himself and doesn't start offering advice on how to improve the dialogue during the performance," Ian said, and they shared a somewhat bitter grin at that.

"Hey," Ian said, after he'd taken a sip of his beer, "I want to know how you are. I spent all of last time completely high-jacking everyone else's right to a whiny self-centred monologue."

"Don't you start," John said sternly, "there is no such thing as allotted whining time, and you needed it very badly last time."

"I did," Ian nodded, "but that doesn't mean no one else did."

John stared at his beer. And then he stared at Ian, trying to work out how much he could say – and it felt wrong, because he'd always been able to say pretty much everything to him, to him and Sharon and Bill, because they had all been in the same, upturned, horribly wrecked boat that was sinking to depths none of them had known existed. Now, though? It wasn't as straight-forward.

"It's fucking weird, and fucking scary," he finally said, settling for that part of the truth, not the part of _I am, despite the fact that it's all pretty difficult, so, so glad that I have new chances to take_ or the part of _I had sex with him, finally, and it's so horrible that he had to die to get us to take that step_.

"Like being caught in a zombie apocalypse?" Ian supplied lightly. He did appear to be a lot better than last time.

John laughed at the randomness of it. "Yeah, I guess so – the constant watching of my back definitely feels like it."

Ian looked at him for a bit. "Have you had that fight with him yet, now?"

"Yeah," John said after a moment's hesitation. "Not all of it. Not by any stretch of the imagination all of it. But some of it, yeah. You guys were right, he can take it again."

"It's no use to speak no ill of the living," Ian said, taking another gulp of his glass.

"It's also not really any use to speak no ill of the dead," John said.

"Yeah, well," Ian said softly, "they can't defend themselves anymore, so it's a bit different."

John thought for a bit. "That's what I love about our little group, though. It's what the big group doesn't have. The rawness. The fact that we can say, God, these people we lost, they were fucking arseholes sometimes. And know that we didn't love them any less for it."

"Ellen was a complete nightmare at times," Ian said promptly. "It doesn't do the memory of all the _other _things that she was any good to deny that."

John looked at him. Feeling better, yes, but not quite his usual witty self. "Are you okay?"

"I told you I only wanted to hear about you tonight," Ian said. "But yes, doctor. I'm okay. I just, you know, wish she was still here to be a nightmare to me."

"And not just a dream," John filled in involuntarily, thinking of Sherlock, and how reality twisted around fantasies and choked them, and made them come true in ways that were nothing like anything anyone ever could have imagined, so what was _true_, anyway, and did it even exist outside of the rotating, shifting domain of language – how in dreams people did things that were incomprehensible, but how in waking they did things that were even more so, and how he couldn't hear any of the things that Sherlock was sometimes saying to him with his body, with his new-found physicality, with the new _life _inside of him, how John was apparently incapable of picking up his trails, his silent words.

"Yeah, that," Ian said quietly. John's heart twitched. He wondered if there was anyone else on this planet who knew what it felt like to have someone return from a realm they thought was utterly, utterly closed – not just _haven't heard from him in thirty years_ or _I heard she lives in France now_ or _she told me once she'd have kids by now, but I don't really know_, but actually, completely, irreversibly: _I watched him die. I felt his skin yield to me in a way that it never had before, nothing left to give. I received into me the final words he said_. That kind of border, that kind of frontier; even with _a trick, a magic trick _on a feverish repeat in half-sleep – was there anyone else who knew how it changed the currents of wind and the slant of sun to find that it could be crossed, somehow?

There was really nothing he could tell Ian, except for: "It's all fucked up."

Ian laughed, because he was Ian. And they clinked glasses in a grim understanding.

He ended up not telling Ian what exactly was really going on between him and Sherlock, but that was okay in a way not a lot of things were nowadays, because it felt great to spend an evening alternating between biting commentary of whatever crap show or half-arsed rugby match was playing on the telly behind the bar, throwing peanuts at each other and sometimes, at times, talking about actual feelings – _right, okay, so how are you_, really, _and don't give me any crap, tell me about your nights, about the hours lost between light, about the cracks that open up beneath you as you cross the street, tell me about the dreams, tell me about the nightmares where she's no longer a nightmare, tell me about you, and how you're not quite sure what your skin is without hers to lie against_, covering all that with a _So, what's up _and skirting over the other words with their eyes, careful; slipping between those different things so naturally was one of the most incredible things about his friendship with Ian.

Ian said: "Do you think alcohol makes people more honest or less?" Wistful, as he sometimes was; Ian could be introspective when he wasn't being ironic, and he inspected his glass with something more of melancholy than grief.

John said: "Dunno. I hope more," because he thought of _I love you_ in a pub, and _John, don't do that, not now_, and there it was again, his mythology, his clichés, because what else would suffice? _In vino veritas_, really? And Sherlock would laugh and laugh and laugh at him, except he didn't know if that was true, anymore, and he could read what Ian was telling him with the slight twitch of the right corner of his mouth (_I'm not sure I can love again, did you know that?_) but he couldn't read what _you _meant.

Because who was he?

But Ian said: "Hey, doctor sir, I wanted you to talk to me about you, not stare off into space the whole time." And he threw a peanut at John. _Seasoned by our tears_.

God, he was lucky to have these people in his life. Lucky. He was so fucking lucky in so many things.

–

Sherlock was out when John came home. The open door to his bedroom managed to be apologetic in a way Sherlock never, ever was. John waited up for him for a bit, then sent a

_Where have you gone off to?_

and was both relieved and annoyed at the

_On a walk.  
SH_

Sherlock didn't respond to his

_Okay, I'm going to bed, then._

so that's what he did, feeling like someone with way too many personalities inside him. And then he had a moment of sheer panic when he woke up in the night, and someone was in bed with him, and it was all a bit too much like the war; but then that morphed into such an intense, overpowering feeling of happiness at realising it was Sherlock that he took his own pulse for a moment to ground himself in reality again.

He just hoped it wasn't a dream, as he carefully shifted backwards, closer to Sherlock, after a moment – who responded immediately, still awake, by nuzzling his face into John's neck and draping his arm over John's side, pressing his bare torso against John's shirt-clad back.

"Good?" he mumbled, obviously not that far from sleep.

And John felt like he had the right to borrow his language again, wrapped together as they were, and whispered: "You idiot, isn't it obvious that it is?"

Sherlock tightened his arm around him, and John felt his mouth curving into a small smile against his neck before he rubbed his nose against the spot where John's neck became his skull.

–

And that way, it was okay again at least for that moment, as Sherlock began to talk into John's neck after a long while, interspersed by long stretches of silence; broken off sentences in English and Spanish and sometimes other things, words in other languages maybe, or just sounds sparking off the speed of his brain in his sleep, and sometimes John even thought he caught his own name, making something in him relax that he hadn't even realised was wound as tight as it was – because if Sherlock was dreaming about him, then this – _this_– could be nothing else than reality, as unreal as it felt.

It was okay again at least for that moment, as the conversations they would have to have – _so, um, what is this thing that's happening between us_ and _so, um, I broke up with Mary and I kind of did it for you_ and _so, um, do you intend on having sex with me again or was this it_ and _so, um, I really want to have sex with you again_ and _so, um, is this a relationship_ and _so, um, will you please not be a tosser __anymore and just talk to me sometimes_ and _so, um, are you okay in any way_ and _so, um, what happened to you in Peru_ and then bigger, bigger _so, um, I think I might be in love with you_ and _so, um, are you in love with me in any way_ – receded into the darkness of the night, into the fabric of life stretching itself to mould around them in this moment of rare peace.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

"John."

A pause.

"John." Sherlock's voice was a quiet stream, a rumble seeping into his dream, softly parting the cobwebs of sleep that lay between him and consciousness, pulling him up through soft swathes of sheets, through a sea of linen into reality, daylight, the tangible press of a pillow against his cheek that materialised in small jerks of awakening.

"Aghrm," John managed to respond, eyelids pressing closed to shut out the infiltrating light for a bit longer.

"John." More of a presence now, the stir of Sherlock's breath on the back of his neck.

"Hnnnghr?"

"Yes, more eloquency, John, whenever you're ready for it."

At that, John's eyes opened in spite of himself. "I – what?" he mumbled, the strange sensations of his dream – _something to do with a castle being taken, and then a shower, a flood, and Sherlock was there, somehow he had been everywhere, like water_– still with him, seeming unwilling to leave him, seeping out of his limbs with a slow liquidity.

"Are you awake?" Sherlock hummed, the vibrato of his voice just under John's ear lobe bringing John to a quicker awareness as his body swam into the focus of his consciousness, pressed flush against Sherlock's, his back and Sherlock's torso connected all the way down to their waists, Sherlock's arm wrapped around him, hand loose on his lower stomach, and John's feet somehow tucked between the long lengths of Sherlock's shins. _Oh_, he realised, eyelids pressing out the last trickles of sleep as he blinked – Sherlock's erection was pressing into his left buttock unapologetically, and Sherlock was, very gently, dragging his lips over the skin just behind his ear.

"I – yes," he said, his sleep-logged body quickly shedding the weight of night, becoming more sharply edged with every touch of Sherlock's lips.

"Good," Sherlock said, then added, "sleep is so _boring_," and his voice was deep and grainy with hours of near disuse, thrilling its way directly down to John's cock, twitching already, more awake than the rest of him. Sherlock closed his lips around his ear lobe in a more intentional move now, and he flattened the hand that had been lying loosely against John's abdomen, splaying out the fingers like a fan, radiating heat from the fingertips. God, how was Sherlock so warm? It didn't seem to fit with his alabasterness, his otherworldliness. Burning out from inside him was radiation like from the inside of a star, beaming away into a cold universe.

"Sherlock," he said, and he realised that he sounded strangled in a way that could be read in different ways – Sherlock seemed to hear it too, his body against John's tensing slightly, his hand coming loose again, his mouth stilling. No, no, no; _no_ had a right again, it could be back in their lives, but only to be _yes_; no, don't stop this, yes, do this. John dug up his own hand from somewhere deep under the covers; he'd lost track of it during the night, when his limbs had become unspun in relaxation, far-flung like distant satellites, but now his hand was his again, and he closed it firmly over Sherlock's, offering up his stomach, because yes, do this, no, don't stop this.

Sherlock made a sound in his ear, a mix of a sigh and a small, quiet moan, and John didn't think he'd ever heard anything quite so sensual in his life. Sherlock trailed his fingers downwards, to the hem of the ratty t-shirt John was wearing, teasing around the edge for a second until he slipped his hand under it, moving upwards over the not-quite-as-firm-as-they-used-to-be muscles of John's stomach, jumping and shivering under his touch, his hand slightly cool on John's sleep-heated torso.

Sherlock's fingers found one of his nipples and lazily slipped over it, the nail of his thumb leaving a slight sting as he flicked it against it deliberately.

"You," he murmured, not quite a growl, not quite a moan, not quite a caress, and yet, and _yet_, all of that and more – and John shivered and pressed his eyes closed tightly, feeling the hot rush of arousal gathering in his gut. God, that _voice_. He gulped audibly as Sherlock licked a confident stripe of wetness on his neck, down from where his shirt began up to where the tenderness of his throat became the armour of his jaw. Sherlock's tongue teased at that spot, pushing at the softness underneath the bone, and _ohgod_, how could he expose John so quickly, so effortlessly, it was as wrong as it was right, and John's cock was hardening quickly, already, with even the barest amount of stimulation.

"Fuck," he whispered, then he let out a strangled moan as Sherlock closed his teeth on his throat, exactly where his pulse was picking up, and he didn't doubt that that was intentional, that Sherlock was closely monitoring the fluttering of the blood under the weak frontier of his skin. He reached back and curled his arm extremely awkwardly around Sherlock, his hand coming to rest on Sherlock's pants-clad arse, and he didn't stop the urge he had and just squeezed it, firm and hard under his fingers, wanting more – more _something_, more Sherlock, and it didn't matter how, as long as he was there, alive, shifting lines of muscle and bone and _mind_, as long as he didn't leave, never again, never again, and John couldn't help that the sound that broke from his throat was almost a sob as Sherlock let out a genuine growl at the contact and slid his hand down over the expanses of his stomach, easily passing the loose boundary of his ratty underwear and wrapped his hand around John's cock without further ado, bringing him to full mast rapidly with long, straight-forward strokes.

For a split second, John thought about the lube in the drawer of his nightstand and how that would have made things more comfortable, but there was something so final about how Sherlock was breathing into his ear, and was starting to rock his hips against John's arse with a dizzying certainty that made John feel like he was caught in a breaking wave of sorts, and was wanking him with sure, steady strokes, slipping his thumb over the head of his cock and working the pre-come down with the palm of his hand to smooth the friction somewhat – no, there was no way he could stop and say _hey, grab that bottle from my drawer_, which was something that he would have done with every other partner, but he couldn't now, because – because – because, he didn't even know, but it felt like it could all still slip from him so easily, even with Sherlock saying it again, now growing increasingly breathless and frantic as he rubbed up against John: _you_.

"Sherlock," John gasped, his hand on Sherlock's arse drawing him even closer, the feel of his erection shifting against John's arse completely, unexpectedly intoxicating, and John had the almost lucid thought _I want all of this fabric gone between us_ and had a moment of surprise at the certainty of that. Not now though, not now; Sherlock was tugging at his cock with a speed and pressure that made his eyes falter, small dots of light dancing in his line of vision as his eyes fell closed, his head falling back to bring his body even closer to the jerking, trembling line of Sherlock's, to press as much air out from between as he possibly could. "God, oh God," he mumbled senselessly as Sherlock groaned into his ear, words falling from him rapidly ("Yes, John, yes, you, si, si, _ah_, yes, _you_–"), now practically rutting against him, one long, lean leg curling itself around John's thigh to give him better leverage, stroking John's cock in a steady counterpoint to his thrusts. John's own hips were straining to move, but couldn't quite make up the direction they wanted to go in – backwards into the disorienting, overpowering sensation of Sherlock working his cock against his arse with a merciful ruthlessness, or forwards into the delicious rhythm of his hand. His body settled for holding almost still, caught between these two forces, trembling, awash with sensation.

"John, you're –" Sherlock panted, and at that John was coming, the sound in his mouth an unfinished _Sherlock _as he spilled himself over Sherlock's fist and in his half tugged-down underpants and in the tangle of sheets around his waist.

"– you're –" And then Sherlock never managed to say what, exactly, John was, as his hips snapped against John's arse one last time and he came, shuddering against John, biting down on John's neck with a sharp sting as if wanting to forcibly stop himself from continuing what he was saying.

They stilled; the day rushed in, blinding, too-real, too-raw, as John managed to open his eyes again. Sherlock's fist unclenched around his softening cock and slid up his stomach, wet and sticky with his come, smearing it on him unapologetically. He could feel the wetness of Sherlock's orgasm seeping through the two thin layers of fabric separating Sherlock's crotch from his arse. It was incredible how coming in his pants like a clumsy teenager felt somehow like a more definitive experience than some of the _proper sex_ he'd had in his life; _sex_, he thought again, a bit dazed, a rough, too-still label for such a jumpy, flowing thing, that changed the air currents between them so thoroughly.

"Fuck," he said after a couple of breathless seconds, and then pushed the covers off them, stifling now, a furnace, a star centre producing all of the elements of the universe exactly between them.

"The language on you, John, honestly," Sherlock responded, slowly, languidly, uncurling his leg to push the sheets down even further with his foot.

John chuckled, still breathing heavily. "I can't –" he began, then didn't know what to choose; _stop? begin? understand? speak? cry? believe this? let you leave me ever again?_

He turned himself around inside Sherlock's half-embrace with some effort, limbs still extremely heavy, and flopped back down so they were facing each other. Sherlock was smiling in an unreadable way, his eyes half-lidded, his lips flushed and full. It was almost shocking to see his face; from the moment he had got into John's bed, a dark shadow in the depth of night, until he'd brought John to orgasm with his mouth next to his ear, he'd been faceless. John brought up his hand and traced the lines of that peculiar face, the curve of his lips, that seemed to defy the laws of physics.

"I'm what?" he asked hoarsely.

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow.

"What am I?" John repeated, a bit more clearly. "You were saying –"

Something flashed across Sherlock's face, something close to fear, as though he'd been caught out; but it was gone so quickly John wasn't sure it had really been there.

"You're John, obviously," Sherlock said, and leaned in to kiss him, almost chaste after what had just happened, just a press of mouth on mouth, lips, sharing a bit of breath, not exactly fresh, but John didn't really care.

"Obviously," John echoed when Sherlock pulled back, a slight discomfort tugging at his gut; but then Sherlock snaked an arm across his side and pushed him flat on his back gently, shifting over to fit his head into the space between John's shoulder and the beginning of his jaw, bringing the rest of their bodies together, Sherlock's long legs entwining themselves with a slow ease with John's. It was enough to momentarily forget the stickiness inside his half-tugged-down pants, the way Sherlock made a small sound of contentment as he moulded himself to John's side, arm heavy and relaxed over his chest. He almost laughed as he thought _I'd never have taken Sherlock to be someone who enjoyed afterglow_, but there they were, in his bed, in the muted light of a rainy spring day that washed everything a mottled grey.

Still, it couldn't have been longer than ten minutes, ten minutes in which John felt sleep collecting in the corners of his consciousness, trying to get back in, trying to overcome the almost paralysed happiness sitting in his chest, before Sherlock pulled himself away, lingering for a second to drag the line of his nose gently over John's temple.

"Are you gone?" John asked.

Sherlock hummed a _yes_, crawling off the bed – the day, impatient, calling him, waiting for him to jump in, to go save a world that he'd quit and that he'd now returned to again, a world that had got by without him, barely, but it had.

"I broke up with Mary," John blurted out before Sherlock reached the door.

Sherlock stopped in his tracks and turned around, face blank, eyebrows slightly raised. How he managed to still look feral while wearing only come-stained underpants was beyond John, but, well, there he was.

"So you did," he said, slowly, reading it now in John's face, and then frowned – John suspected he was trying to recall any of the clues that he had obviously missed. "You said things were going well."

John blinked. Then, as the words registered, a horrible, horrible stone dropped into his stomach; the jolt of it was so great he sat up in spite of himself.

"I – yes," he said, a bit wildly.

"Then why...?" Sherlock didn't even finish the question as he looked at John with a mixture of curiosity and neutrality. John couldn't tell if it was genuine or not.

"Sherlock," John said, something that felt a terrible lot like desperation coming to grasp at him, but he tried to push it away, because _no_, he was a person, he wasn't just Holmes-and-Watson, he _wasn't_, he _was_, he was someone. It worked better than he had expected it to, John Watson again, and he lifted his eyes to Sherlock again, feeling a bit stronger.

Sherlock, in apparent confusion, raised his eyebrows even more.

"Things _were_ going well," John said after a slow, conscious breath, "but then I had sex with _you_."

Sherlock blinked, then his face darkened with something John couldn't identify, and he padded back to the bed, sinking down on it heavily and twisting around until he was facing John. John wanted to beat him to it, because this needed to be his conversation. So he said, feeling uncomfortably like he was taking a jump down a slope of which he didn't know the steepness nor the depth: "And I wanted to keep having sex with you."

Sherlock passed his hands over his face and then threaded them in his hair, before looking straight at John, looking a bit comical that way, or he would have, if this conversation wasn't so full of hidden needles and potential traps ready to spring. "You love her." The statement was like any one of his, but his eyes were narrowed in something else than calculation.

"I – I guess I do," John said. He guessed he did. It couldn't have been put more aptly. "Or at least, I could very easily see it coming to that. But I – I –" the _I love_ you _more, you tosser, or at least I love you_ differently, _and it seems to be what I need _didn't quite allow itself to be formed. "I couldn't... I couldn't keep doing this and keep seeing her, because it violated all of the rules that we'd agreed on as a couple."

Sherlock seemed genuinely thrown for a loop, which was a strange, unfamiliar thing to see on his face. "I didn't... I hadn't thought..." He fell silent, bringing his palms together in the familiar gesture under his chin. At the altar of thought once more, the profane worshipper.

"What?" John prompted, the cold ball in his chest growing.

"I thought it was all right," Sherlock simply said. "I thought you'd say no if it wasn't all right."

There was a silence between them, a silence that stretched across a chasm, as though they were on separate continents, drifting apart imperceptibly.

John tried to reach for him, tried to be the bridge himself. "Sherlock, could you... tell me what this – this thing we have – what it means to you?"

Sherlock closed his eyes briefly. John had the insane desire to force them open with his fingers, so he could be part of what was playing out on the inside of his eyelids.

"I told you," Sherlock finally said, voice quiet and uninflected, "it's something I want." He opened his eyes. "It's something I've wanted for..." He appeared to be counting, eyes flicking to and fro almost imperceptibly. "...thirty-nine months and twenty-three days."

John couldn't stop the startled laugh. "Seriously?"

Sherlock fixed him with the look, and then gave in and explained, nose slightly wrinkled: "It was a Tuesday. Winter. You were standing at the sink. You were wearing one of your terrible jumpers. I haven't seen it in a while. Not in more than two years, in fact. Good thinking in ditching it. You were doing the dishes. In a strop with me for something. I've deleted what. Something utterly inconsequential. You weren't talking." Sherlock's eyes flicked to the ceiling and then, mercifully, a small grace in this world with so much to wonder at, fixed back on John's. "And I didn't understand it. But all I could think about was how much I wanted to make you talk again, make you talk while having an orgasm if I had the choice, against me if possible, looking at me if in any way possible." He finished the sentence like it wasn't the most utterly heartbreaking thing in the world, as if it wasn't a black hole that distorted the edges of the room.

John had to remember how to breathe. "Why –" he squeaked, then closed his eyes for a split second, because the details of Sherlock's face before him were too overwhelming for a moment. "Why didn't you... do something?" _why didn't you kiss me why didn't you press yourself to me why didn't you wrap your arms around me why didn't you pull at my terrible jumper until it came off why didn't you tell me that you were going to make me come right then and there if I wanted you to why didn't you I wanted you to I wanted you to I would have let you I would have let you and maybe then everything wouldn't have the weight of too many lifetimes on it too many orbits of too many planets why didn't you and fuck why didn't I why didn't I why didn't we why did we waste so much time why_

"I didn't think you wanted me to," Sherlock said simply. Sherlock, who immersed himself in everything he wanted until it became submerged in him instead of the other way around, who grabbed things that he wanted to understand and held them to the light from every angle, who threw himself into his desires, that until not long ago John had thought to be purely intellectual, who didn't take his eyes off things he wanted even for a second and went for them with a complete disregard for anything else – grabbing a hold of knowledge, insight, thrills, danger; Sherlock, _that_ Sherlock, but also not quite that Sherlock, because things were different, they were, but it was _still Sherlock_, even if all the cells in his body had been renewed in the slow, relentless, uncaring processes of biology, now said that he had wanted John for thirty-nine months and twenty-three days, and he hadn't acted; he hadn't thought John wanted him to, and so he hadn't, and then he'd fallen out of life, just like that, as though life was a coat pocket with a hole in it and he was just a lost key.

"Fuck," John swore, whole-heartedly. "Fuck, Sherlock, and all this time... All that time, I wanted to... Fuck. _Fuck_."

Sherlock was looking at him mildly, though there was a hint of apprehension on his face, as well. "I didn't see it," he said then, sounding a bit bitter. "I should have seen it."

John let out a laugh at that, because _God_, this nutter of a man, this marvel, this insanely brilliant stupid creature. "It's not your job to see everything, Sherlock."

Sherlock fixed him with a look that distinctly spelled disagreement.

"No," John pursued, "I should have _told _you. I should have... I should have let you know, somehow, that I..."

"Well, you're an idiot," Sherlock said without spite, "you couldn't have known what I wanted." And he was too logical, shifting the blame in a way that John couldn't allow.

He shook his head, because no. Then, his heart hammering, he said: "Do you understand now what I thought I'd lost? What I thought I'd let slip? Forever?"

Sherlock looked at him with the look of a man who'd just heard that he was sentenced to death. It was a bit startling after the earlier blankness of the mask. "Obviously. I've always understood, John," he said, but there was something in his expression that said to John that that wasn't quite true, that the magnitude of things were becoming clearer to him, too; a small flicker of _oh_, of _oh, I get it now._

John felt decidedly strange. The sex they'd just had could quite rightfully be called clumsy, as could all of the sex they'd had so far, really, but what to do with this feeling of _world_, of containing so many other things, of being a – God, he was getting so sentimental – symbol of other things, diffuse things, things of love, of stories, and what was even happening to them, he didn't know, it felt like water flowing through his fingers. At the way Sherlock sat with him on his bed, folded in on himself a bit, the scar on his ribs hidden by his arm nestled against himself – consciously? subconsciously? – and looked as though he felt something taking a more solid shape inside his mind, John had that ridiculous feeling of mythology again, of Cassandra, of language failing – but _no_, he couldn't let it, they weren't heading for tragedy, they could hear each other, they could.

"Are we in a relationship?" John decided to be straight-forward. It always worked better with Sherlock, because he got annoyed when he could see through the round-abouts of usual conversation, and well, he always could.

"Evidently," Sherlock said immediately, not in the least daunted.

John felt the coldness in his chest unloop a little at that. But he knew about language, and how it could stretch itself to accommodate the breadth of reality, and how Sherlock and language had an uneasy partnership at the best of times. "And what does that... mean to you?" Fuck it if he wasn't starting to sound like his therapist, and he had a moment of intense dislike for himself.

Sherlock frowned, _Christ, John, you know, and if you don't_... "What it always has."

"Which is what?" John pressed, and then was grateful in a small, subdued way that Sherlock refrained from commenting on his redundancy, because wasn't it obvious, honestly John.

"You are... _important_," Sherlock said carefully, his mouth twisting as he felt his way around this unfamiliar territory of language trying to overlap with the shifting, fleeting forms of feeling. "I came back to you, because – because after two years I still couldn't get to sleep without thinking of you. I was still thinking about _home_ in terms of you. It wasn't just –" and he made a vague gesture, meaning _this place_, "– it was _you_."

John burned a little on the inside at that, a small collapsing of elements into the beginning flare of a star. "Is that why –" he swallowed, his throat dry, "– why you kissed me, that night?"

Sherlock considered. "Yes, I do think so," he said. Then added: "And I was a bit intoxicated. It was a pleasant surprise for you to react as you did. I hadn't expected it at all."

John's chuckle was aborted by the strange heaviness of the moment pressing in on them. "So it doesn't... It doesn't change anything for you, then?"

Sherlock spent a moment smoothing out the rumple of sheets he was sitting on, avoiding John's eye. "Obviously it changes something," he finally said, "but more because it changes things for _you _than for me." He paused for a moment. "I'm very aware of the fact that you expect things from relationships that I'm not... I might not be able to provide... always, or even regularly, or..." He shook his head as though trying to force something out of it. Even his head not an ally at times like this. Even the world that was shivering, growing, unfolding between the bone borders of his skull not enough at times like this. John's heart ached just looking at it. Sherlock continued, carefully: "So if you need something that I can't give you, you should get it from someone who can. It's only logical."

_It's only logical_– as though there was anything logical about the hot rush of love in John's chest; as though there was anything logical about how he crawled into the space of Sherlock's body, his projected physicality, and pulled at his face until they were looking at each other; as though there was anything logical about saying "I'll take whatever you can give me," and meaning it so deeply that it was almost ridiculous, and most definitely worrying; as though there was anything logical about the kiss, that was too much, too much, too much, and not enough.

When they broke apart after what seemed like a long stretch of time, John somehow pulled into Sherlock's lap, Sherlock looked a bit dazed, a bit confused, a bit happy, a lot everything. John realised with a detached wonder that he'd just pretty much committed himself to an exclusive relationship with Sherlock, and had a moment of subdued panic and careful joy coming to knock on the door of his brain.

"Will you do this with me?" he asked, then felt a strange hot twisting as he realised, uncontrollably, how much that was like _please, will you do this for me_. A leap of an altogether different kind.

Sherlock looked a bit like a wild animal that had the confusing desire to come eat from a proffered hand. But he said: "I thought I already was."

John closed his eyes, it was too much; it didn't fit inside John Watson, it was universe-sized, this bedroom couldn't hold it, the whole of London couldn't hold it, bursting at the seams. He pulled them closer together, losing eye contact, gaining skin contact.

"John," Sherlock said, and he sounded heartbreakingly doubtful as he pressed his cheek against John's forehead, "I can't promise that I –"

"Won't be a fucking wanker sometimes?" John cut in. "That's obvious even to me, you idiot."

Sherlock said nothing, and instead slid the sharpness of a cheekbone against the side of John's face, allowing the curve of John's temple to connect with the hollow of one of his eyes, closed, lashes quivering lightly, almost imperceptibly, as though sending small smoke signals to John's brain, on the other side of that boundary.

–

Downstairs, Sherlock's parcel was sitting on the kitchen table, obviously hastily re-fastened, looking even more clumsy than it had on arrival.

"It's from Julian," Sherlock said, unprompted.

"Your Peruvian friend?"

"Yes."

"That's... nice?" John hazarded.

Sherlock fixed him with a stern look. "Or not," he amended.

"He's in a bit of trouble, it would seem," Sherlock said quietly as he tugged the cracked cardboard open again, and showed John what was inside – utterly meaningless to John, it was a badly battered copy of a _Superman_ comic. He remembered what Sherlock had said during that first moment in the Chinese restaurant – _it was something to do_. Of course it hadn't just been something to do, not there, not in that place with the geography of death where life was trying to be ended for real this time at every corner.

"It's a code," Sherlock said. "_Superman_ means _help me_. He thought it up. He's quite the American comic book aficionado."

"Right." Ah, fuck. "So he's being threatened?"

"Apparently," Sherlock said darkly, as he went over to his laptop, flicked it open and sat down with it at the table.

"Why did he... Why does he send you this instead of just, I don't know, calling you, or something? Seems awfully indirect, doesn't it? How long will this have been underway?"

"Fifteen days," Sherlock responded absent-mindedly, already half-way slipping into a focus that excluded this conversation. "And I don't know. He hasn't responded to my attempts of contact. I've spent most of last night trying to get to him, but it hasn't worked." He glanced at his phone. "I gave it eighteen hours. Fourteen hours ago."

"And after the eighteen hours?" John asked, already knowing the answer.

"I'm booking the flight to Lima now." Sherlock's face was passive and pale. Then, he looked over at John, and something that looked like surprise sparked in his face, as though he remembered something. "I should have told you that sooner."

John waved it away, though inside him a small point of warmth was glad that Sherlock had said it, that Sherlock was already trying in his own way to fit what he knew of _things John might want from a relationship_ into the shifting mass of _things Sherlock does_. "Fuck, no, you do whatever it is you need to help him."

Sherlock was scrolling down a long length of web page detailing the different medication shots he'd need to travel to South America. John watched his long fingers on the mouse pad, wondering at that – Sherlock had never been one to care about medical regulation, but then, some things had changed and despite the smoke signals Sherlock had sent him just now, wrapped into him, there was no way that John had seen all of them already.

"Is this a left-over from Moriarty?" he finally asked, trying to sound calm.

Sherlock's fingers stilled for a moment. "Everything of Moriarty's has been destroyed," he said, blankly.

"Well, maybe a second in command – or I dunno, a tenth in command – someone who managed to stay out of the... the whole thing, or something, don't you think it's possible that –" _they're targeting him because he was associated with you?_

"No," Sherlock said, and there was such ice lurking under that one syllable that John fell silent. God, only to wrench that ice open, to crack its surface so he could get at what was frozen underneath, so he could warm up the part of Sherlock that was still infected with it – _what happened, God, what happened, tell me, please_– but the unshackling of Sherlock Holmes was a slow process, one chain at a time, and John had the sobering feeling that several links of the chain had slipped already in his bed and it would be pushing his luck to try to undo more.

There was a long silence in which only Sherlock's mouse clicks stirred the air between him. "He's in trouble because of me, otherwise he wouldn't have sent me this." Sherlock finally said, and got up. "I have to get him out of it again. It's likely drugs." He stared out in front of him for a split second, eyes flicking around a bit in that way he had when he was calculating something.

John licked his lips. "How can he be in drug trouble because of you? I thought you weren't really in the coca business?"

Sherlock's eyes stilled. He looked at John with a mixture of defiance and apprehension. "Reliable covers need to be upheld somehow."

John tried to read his face and couldn't.

"Sherlock," he said, a point of coldness igniting in his chest. "Did you –"

Sherlock's mouth pulled closed, as though he were locking it from the inside. "It wasn't a good time," he finally said, clipped, as though that was an explanation, as though that said anything at all.

"You used," John said, and he was unable to keep his voice from catching.

Sherlock's face blanked as his shoulders sagged.

"You did. You used." John looked at him and had to close his eyes for a second against the red blots coming to blur his vision, spots of – of a rush of fury at so much more than just this, such a sudden, irrational, visceral anger that his hands, curled into fists, were coming up in jerks to grab at Sherlock; hit him, shake him, grab him into a kiss of fury, he couldn't tell, but Sherlock saw it coming, and closed his own hands over his fists, his long fingers lean and strong and knowing.

"John," he said, and his stern tone only made John bristle, try to break free – and then _Sherlock_ was kissing _him_, over the painful link of their hands; wet and strong and not at all lovely. "Not now," he breathed as he pulled back, but only a fraction, so his scent was everywhere and John's lip was still stuck to his, the bastard.

"It's never now," John growled and was the one who brought his head further back to stop the mingling of their breaths, to regain a space of his own. It wasn't quite true, of course, because in his bed, that had been _now_, it had, but there was still so much left, and this – it made him want to tear his hair out.

"It really can't be now, though," Sherlock said, and he was quite gentle, and John wanted to wipe that off his face with an intensity that was startling, "I have to go to Peru."

"Yeah, let's not talk about your relapse when you were in Peru _because you need to catch a plane to go __back to Peru_. Sounds like a fucking plan!" John snapped. And then: growing louder, voice flickering across the border of shouting: "And while we're at it, let's not talk about what happened there at all, shall we? Let's not talk about the _two fucking years_ you spent in Finland and Peru and who the fuck knows where else doing something that obviously has you so messed up that you still haven't told me one fucking thing about it! _Good fucking idea_!"

Sherlock's eyes, flashing, bright, were trying to tell him something. After a long, heavy moment his mouth, tense, tight, told him: "It's not what you think."

And that was so empty, and so meaningless, and it could refer to so many different things that John's fist strained against the keyless locks of Sherlock's hands with the honest desire to just punch his lights out. "Good you always know what I think, but I don't usually have a _clue _what you're thinking, and don't you – don't you dare –" John bristled as Sherlock leaned in again as if to kiss him again. Sherlock broke off the movement and froze halfway, and now they were both standing off-balance, off-kilter, away from the point of weight that had held them together. And then Sherlock still did it, but so slowly that it was different, and he looked John in the eye while he did it, and his hands slipped from John's fists, which were relaxing in spite of himself, and there was such a plea in his eyes that when his lips tentatively touched against John's it didn't feel like a fight, but like a surrender, almost.

John's hands, traitors, unclenched and moulded to Sherlock's side, and his mouth, still full of shout, was now full of kiss.

Sherlock pulled back, and pulled John with him, the broken curl of their off-kilter bodies restored, against each other, and rested his nose against the side of John's.

"I'm not going away," he finally said, his voice an infuriating stretch of smoothness. "I'm coming back. I'm coming back again."

"You're a bastard," John said, and the unexpected tear that dripped from his eye rolled down to meet the tip of Sherlock's nose, and he winced at himself, but Sherlock only pressed into him more.

"I know," Sherlock said.

"This isn't over." John tried to sound menacing and ended up half-menacing and half-trembling with a love he was sure Sherlock could identify from him by now.

Sherlock rubbed against the wetness of the tear. "I should hope not."

And he sounded a bit too level-headed, but they were hugging as though it was a matter of life and death. And God, John thought, maybe it _was_.

After a while he began to feel that his desire to stay attached to Sherlock like that forever was only swelling with every passing second, and in a burst of self-preservation he broke the embrace. "When's your plane?" he said, and tried to sound normal.

"Need to get going in twenty minutes," Sherlock said, his hands leaving John's body with a clear reluctance.

John felt too much like a ridiculous pastiche of the over-dramatic lover left behind for comfort, but he said, a bit shakily: "Plenty of time for a shower and some toast, then."

–

And he would have said _be careful or I'll kill you myself_ but Sherlock was Sherlock, and he would have said _please, please don't fall into the trap of the cocaine again _but Sherlock was Sherlock, and he would have kissed him goodbye but Sherlock was Sherlock, and he would have felt worried but Sherlock was Sherlock, and none of that would have helped, really, against the silence in Baker Street. Of course he still felt worried anyway, because he lacked Sherlock's ability to chuck emotion when it wasn't useful, and had a moment of insanity in which he considered not changing the soiled sheets on his bed, because they still had something of Sherlock; and then he remembered that he wasn't thirteen, and that Sherlock had only been gone a couple of hours, and he changed them, trying not to feel as if he was skinning the bed, shedding its secrets tucked into the layers of the covers between which they had hid and found each other for a short moment.

He would have said _I love you_ when Sherlock was about to leave, but he felt enough of a Mills and Boons character as it was, and it still somehow felt like language wasn't quite there yet anyway, hadn't quite followed them on this winding road, had fallen behind a bit, couldn't do it yet, be spoken in the light of day and not in the protective bubble of night and alcohol. And Sherlock was Sherlock of course and sometimes when things were really obvious he missed them, though he _had _pressed his nose to John's forehead for a second before bounding down the stairs in the familiar explosion of coat and grim energy.

John cradled his cup of tea and tried not to feel as though it meant a lot that Sherlock had spent a significant portion of the eighteen hours in bed with him. And he tried not to feel as though it was a personal victory that he'd finally shouted at Sherlock again, because really, that hadn't been much of a fight – but then he did feel for a while like it had been good, because maybe fighting shouldn't really be a goal in itself, and something _had_ happened, a lot had happened, something had changed when he'd said _this isn't over_. And then he didn't feel like a real person for a bit, and decided to text Greg. Beer to fill in the cracks, to glaze all of this over with a sheen of normality.

–

Greg said, sympathetically: "You're being more than a bit ridiculous, you know?"

"I know," John said, and flicked his phone closed and slipped it into the back pocket of his trousers. "Please get me drunk so I'll forget to check my texts."

"At your service," Greg said, and waved enthusiastically at the bartender.

–

"Fuck, what is this?" John said, trying to get his eyes to fix on his glass.

"No disrespecting the whiskey, all right," Greg said, a bit slurred, "it's twelve fucking years old."

–

"'m _serious_, Zjohn," Greg said, a muscle next to his eye jumping, prompting John to giggle, "just _punch him already_, so he can – can finallly grow _up _a liddle, and... and then fuck him, if you're – so inclllined."

"Shtop projecting yourself on mm-me," John slurred, sloshing beer down his front. "Punch him _yourshelf _if you're –" he hiccoughed, "if you're so fuckin keen."

"Ogay," Greg wheezed, "I _will_. If you'll... lllet me."

"Ov course," John said sagely, and slammed his pint down on the table.

–

"Shomeone just... needs to sher-sherioushly punch his fuckin lights out," Greg mumbled, trying to steady John against him as they were ushered out by the bartender. "Annnd – it hash to be you, y'know, or mmme, and then – and then you," he wheezed.

"Going to – be sick," John muttered, and Greg held his hand on his head through it.

–

Somehow he'd been able to get into the flat, but he couldn't get up the stairs and slept instead in Sherlock's bed. That, and the fact that at some point, he could after a long fight get his eyes to focus on the _Landed. SH_in his inbox, made things quite okay, until he realised how nauseous he felt.

–

In the morning Greg texted him, much too early:

_Fuck, I haven't been this hung  
over since uni. Almost threw  
up at a scene just now. You okay?  
Greg_

And though the screen was a bit trembly in front of his eyes, he managed with a long, drawn-out effort to type out a doubly spell-checked

_Yeah, okay. Brave man, actually  
going to work. Is it me or do you  
feel REALLY strongly about  
punching Sherlock?  
J_

He could almost feel the silent amusement, as well as the mortification, in the

_I stand by every word I said  
last night. The ones I remember,  
anyway.  
Greg_

And then it was a bit too much to contemplate over the violent pounding of his hangover, this alternate universe that he'd apparently found himself in, and he buried his face back into his pillow – well, Sherlock's pillow, and that did seem to matter somehow – laughing a bit at himself.

–

Thirty-six hours after Sherlock's plane had landed in Lima, when he could no longer stop himself from doing it, he sent Sherlock a text:

_Let me know that you're  
okay now and then?_

And Sherlock's response was

_Okay.  
SH_

And the next day, exactly twenty-four hours from the last one, a new response:

_Okay.  
SH_

And the next day, twenty-four hours later to the minute:

_Okay.  
SH_

And John laughed for a bit and touched the screen of his phone involuntarily at Sherlock trying to find his way through the maze of what he thought John might need, and doing a surprisingly good job of offering it up in a tangible Sherlock-way, a piece of himself that John could look at, _SH_, SH so far away in body again, but now not quite so much in mind, back in a place that had been death to him in probably more than one way, but sending himself back to the world of the living that was John's in tiny pixel bytes, in small words of two syllables, stretching across a whole spectrum of reality. Okay.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

It was in the middle of the sixth night of Sherlock's absence that John woke up for no particular reason in Sherlock's bed and thought to himself: _I haven't touched Sherlock's cock yet_.

Subsequently he spent some time going over his memories of the three times they'd got off together, and had to take a bit of a break to wank (_fuck_, what was his life, was he actually sixteen again?), before deciding that, indeed, he hadn't touched Sherlock's cock – not with his hands, anyway; Sherlock had come against John's cock and his arse, but it had all been through his own stimulation, and well, and then he had to take another moment to decide whether the new twinge of arousal would _actually _become a new erection, but then he obviously wasn't sixteen and it didn't happen.

The realisation, as well as the fact that he hadn't realised before now, felt a bit too ominous for comfort. He'd have to rectify it when Sherlock came back.

_I am being quite effectively topped_, he thought, and honestly wasn't sure how to feel about that. He fluffed up one of Sherlock's pillows and nuzzled into it, trying to tease out a fragment of Sherlock's scent, but it only really smelled of nothing by now, after six nights of John sleeping in this bed, and maybe it smelled of himself, but he wasn't Sherlock and he couldn't tell.

Oh well. They were now ten days into their relationship, if it was counted from their first time having an orgasm together (and John was aware of how random that was; why not when he had said _I love you_ in the pub, why not when Sherlock had said in the shower _obviously you want it, and I want it_, why not when John had broken up with Mary, why not when Sherlock had said _I thought I already was_ or even, why not since the moment they moved in together the first time, now almost four years ago, several disturbed orbits of universe ago, because that was apparently how Sherlock counted it; _it means the same it always has_) and it was all going pretty smoothly. Of course, that had mostly to do with the fact that Sherlock had now been in Peru for six days. Still, John thought with a wry humour, they were doing rather well.

–

The fact that Sherlock was gone also gave him a point of quiet. Good quiet. John Watson quiet. That was nice, and it was necessary, and he was him, and he was inside his skin again. Also bad quiet. Without Sherlock Holmes quiet; boring; a bit empty. Disturbing quiet at times.

He thought of Mary.

And then didn't, because that kind of guilt needed some time to soften.

And then did, of course, because he was John Watson, and not thinking about things was, in spite of what Sherlock sometimes seemed to think, not his strong suit.

He texted his band of mourners (as he called them with grim humour in his head), quite restless, and Ian and Bill both couldn't make it, their texts terse, but over her barely-touched martini, Sharon said, with constructed detachment, in response to the _I've just never cheated on anyone before, y'know_: "I don't... _condone _it, John. It's not... It's not right. But the best thing you could have done was break it off with her as soon as you could, and I guess that's what you did... or tried to do."

Then she took a breath and seemed to force herself to stop looking everywhere but at him; she did that when she was nervous and didn't know what social rules to follow. Now she looked at him, though, her thin lips pursed into a line.

"I don't know," she said, "but we've all been here for a while, John." She leaned a little closer. Her face was tight, and drawn, and focused. "Do you want me to tell you what I think?"

"Yes," he said, though he was a little frightened.

She spent a moment watching her drink, then said: "You've been cheating on yourself all this time. Cheating on her was being honest, in the most fucked up way possible." She then cracked a somewhat bitter smile. "Though she... No one deserves that, of course. She didn't. But, well – things happen to people who don't deserve them all the time. You and I know all about that."

He looked at her, carefully. She allowed him to make eye contact as she brought the glass to her lips and took such a small sip he wasn't sure it had actually been one. He wondered for a fraught moment if she meant that none of them had deserved death to happen to them in that indirect and oh-so-direct way that it had, or that he hadn't really deserved life to happen to him that way, either – but then he remembered that she wasn't callous, that she had managed to keep some of the softness in her in spite of the knives that life had thrown her way, and that she was still a shadow of the warm woman she must have been before tragedy put out some of her flames.

_Cheating on her was being honest._He turned it over in his head, and had to say no to it in the end, because it shifted blame in a way he couldn't accept; but it still helped, it still made him look at her with a liquid tenderness collecting in a point in his chest. He looked at her, at the dimmed light that was her, and he could imagine the brightness she would have emitted if her glow hadn't been high-jacked by life that had happened, death that had happened, because that was still the same thing.

"Do you know that it was –" John began, spurred into action by a strange sense of guilt.

"Of course I do," she broke through the sentence uncharacteristically, almost harshly, and John didn't know if that was because she couldn't bear to hear Sherlock's name, that name with its unreachable miracle, or because she couldn't bear to bring John to say it. Really, it had been stupid to presume that this sharp, raw-edged, exhausted woman didn't know what was going on, after all of the _fuck I love him and he never knew I loved him and he's gone and if I had a new chance I'd do it differently iddoeverythingdifferently._

She broke the long moment of eye contact between them and disturbed the still surface of her martini with her index finger. Small ripples, an inaudible tinkling of ice, tiny shockwaves in a microverse.

It took him a horrible while to remember that friendship was supposed to be two-sided, and he had a small moment of intense dislike for himself.

"How are you, then," he asked, leaning closer into her.

She smiled, as though she genuinely appreciated the question, though he knew quite intimately how it always brought with it so many different nuances of good and horrible.

And maybe she was a bit drunk already. Or maybe, more likely, the honesty that she'd given him had made her a bit bolder. She looked at him and said: "I'm a horrible mother sometimes," and then proceeded to wave all of his objections away – _are you kidding me, your children are lucky to have you and your husband, you love them, you listen to them, of course it isn't easy, but you're there for them and Sharon, please, just see this, please._

"No," she said firmly, "it's horrible that I have this love in me and I can't give it to them anymore. It's not just Liam's love," she said, "it's... all of the love. It's like it's got locked up inside me when he died." She dipped her finger into her martini again, not looking at John. "I'd never before thought that... that love came out of a, I dunno, a _reservoir_," and then she did look at him, pained, at the language that wasn't enough, "a place of love that wasn't focused on different people. I thought my love was... distinct? Does that make sense?"

She often asked for reassurance about her feelings, and he nodded, not just to help her, because he understood, really, recalling the months in which he hadn't been able to care about anything but _a magic trick_ in his dreams, and how fucking difficult it had been to unlock _his _love, and how it had only worked after he'd gained a new, horrible ability to keep what he'd felt for Sherlock behind bars, to isolate it from new people he met, and he thought of Mary again, and took a big gulp of beer to drown the memory.

"It's not distinct," she was saying, shaking her head, "one link of it is gone and I can't feel any of it anymore."

He tentatively reached out to touch a finger to the hand holding the martini glass. "It's only been eight months," he said, though he felt like a wanker for it, because it didn't _help_, and he'd punched Greg in the eye once for saying _It's only been four months, John_, but it didn't make it any less true and that was one of the things that reality could never undo.

She laughed, a clear laugh like the tinkling of the ice in her glass, and as cold.

"Eight months is a long time when you're nine and eleven," she then said, so subdued John had to strain to hear her, and. God. He didn't know what to say.

Little Liam, who hadn't been there nearly for long enough, a four years that John had spent mostly with and then fully without Sherlock, unaware of Sharon, unaware of Liam, only aware of himself and of Sherlock, and that had been Liam's life, those boundaries of time, little Liam who'd suffered through the time that he had had, bad genes, illness, sorry-ma'am-nothing-we-can-do, who'd gone away in the night after the short day of his life and taken things with him that Sharon was now blindly groping about to find again.

"You still love them," he told her and had to take a sip of beer to get the dry, sandy chafe of _what the hell are you saying to her _out of his throat.

"If I can't say it, then what does it matter?" she said.

"It matters," he said, throat rasping, and thought of _I love you _in a pub because he couldn't help it, his feelings were no one's but his own and it came down to that again in the end, and it wasn't the same, of course, but as he looked across to her, she was watching him with that residual softness in her face that should by all rights have been erased, but had managed to remain.

"I hope you're right," she said, and then, finally, took a real gulp.

"I know I am," he said, trying not to flinch, trying not to think about the fact that he knew because he had the chance to know, again.

Her smile was wavering and genuine.

–  
_  
When you get back, I want  
to touch your cock._

The first response was, hours later, right on time:

_Okay.  
SH_

and John wasn't sure how to feel about that. Then, five seconds later:

_I'm a bit busy right now,  
John.  
SH_

and, well, maybe that was about the extent that Sherlock engaged in sexy texting. At least, and John felt a guilty weight coming to rest on him, while doing God knew what in a presumably extremely dangerous environment, rife with so many terrors of different kinds, trying to outrun drug lords, fighting his own demons, probably, and then also of course: _Superman means help me_ – trying to save a friend who'd saved him, who'd been with him through what John sometimes, when he was feeling creative, imagined to have been an extremely uprooting, confusing time. He sighed. He supposed it was already quite exceptional for Sherlock to uphold his consistent messages of okay-ness, but he felt quite cut off nevertheless. It honestly, truly felt a bit too much like Sherlock gone again – John filling his days with work and the friends that he had that weren't Sherlock, and Sherlock... Sherlock in the exact same place as he had been as when he had been dead. The _Okay_ every day was enough of a reminder that this was a chronicle of a foreseen return, this time, but he was so remote again, and it felt cold, it felt naked and empty after the way the fabric of life had had to stretch beyond itself to admit him back in, so huge, so overpowering. It wasn't that a _Got shot at today. Survived, evidently. SH_ would have given him more calm of mind, but it would have been something, something... what? He didn't know what, but it would have been _something_.

He fiddled with his phone for a listless minute, before remembering that there was a patient waiting to be buzzed in.

–

He was walking home from the clinic, as much at ease as he could be knowing that Sherlock was in all probability getting shot at in that instant, enjoying the clear, frail light of a spring gaining in confidence, when it hit him with a weird kind of lucidity that he had actually sent Sherlock a text saying that he wanted to touch his cock.

And, well, it really wasn't anything new, was it? He'd wanked himself over thoughts of touching Sherlock's cock for years now, and then when it became, startlingly, differently, a reality, turning fantasy on its head, he had felt more bliss at fumblingly coming in his pants with Sherlock's fist wrapped around him than he had ever had spilling himself inside any one of his girlfriends, who had been wonderful and soft and beautiful and honestly, honestly enticing, but who had never made him come by saying _you, you, you_; who had just never got to him in that way, not even Mary in the end, though she came closest, with her easy, fiery grace. It was hardly a surprise that he should want to touch Sherlock's cock.

Sherlock would mock him for ages and ages if he had been present for the particular slowness of this development of thought.

But it was just... Exactly _how gay _was he, really? What did it mean that he really, truly wanted to touch Sherlock's cock, see it go flushed under his fingers, bounce up as John worked it from base to tip – what did it mean that he wanted to gain some control over the colour of Sherlock by sucking his cock to shining purpleness, and calculate the small weight of his balls in his hands, a small part of what made Sherlock a body, a weight that gravity still worked upon, even after his cheating of it, his smacking to concrete with a force that should have killed him but instead brought him to distant shores, distant dangers.

His voice, now lifetimes ago: _which is fine, by the way_. Sherlock, still so new, still in his first gust of hurricane in John's life, before the winter, before this bright new spring: _oh, I know it's fine_. Him again, sincerely despite the tension already forming itself between them, just a taste of what would be to come: _I'm just saying – it's_ all _fine_. And Sherlock again: _thank you_, a small miracle on that first night when Holmes-and-Watson were still only barely being drawn into orbit around each other, only barely starting to feel each other's pull, fledgling twin stars around a shared point of balance. He had to wonder now at it for a bit, at _I consider myself married to my work, and while I'm flattered_ – because five months later Sherlock would be watching him doing the dishes, angry at something that would fade into obscurity, and would be wanting to make him talk, while having an orgasm, if there was that choice. And a lifetime later, literally, ohgod, an infuriating, impossible, heartbreaking thirty-nine months later Sherlock would pull him into the space of his mouth, sticky with beer, full of want of a particular sort, yes, John, now, _you_. Time was a strange, pushing, insistent thing, getting Sherlock from _married to my work_ to _wanted to make you talk again, make you talk while having an orgasm if I had the choice, against me if possible, looking at me if in any way possible_. He entertained the possibility that maybe he had been a strange, pushing, insistent thing, too, and it made him feel so wonderful he had to rein the feeling in a bit, because it wasn't meant for this kind of careful spring day, the street bustling with – mostly – peace and – some – violence.

It _was_ all fine. It had been all his life, really. He'd literally fought people who dared to call Harry a lesbo or a dyke, at least if they were people who she didn't know and didn't say it sharing a smile with her. (That had been one of his first tangible encounters with the slipperiness, the inadequacy of language.) He'd told his mother that she'd better shape up her game if she wanted to have any children in her life at all, because even if he and Harry had already started to go awry, had started to miss each other when they threw words at one another, he was still loyal to her by blood and by idea, and he wouldn't accept his parents being homophobes, it wouldn't do, this was post-modernity and there was enough pain already in this universe built out of horrible probability as it stood. He'd watched some of his fellow soldiers form bonds that made them happy and it had made him genuinely happy, too – even if the two or three desperate fumbles in dark military tents in Afghanistan, trying to numb rawness with an excess of rough feeling, trying to get a hold on death by holding onto throbbing, screaming life, hadn't quite made him happy, and had had more to do with trying to chuck John Watson for a bit than finding him. He'd examined _queer_ when it arose and he'd happened upon it in his early twenties, just when Harry was also happening upon it in a different sense; and he'd found the concept to be quite wonderful, really, and if he had had more of a thinking head he might have realised a lot sooner that the idea that identity can crumble and re-build itself with time and the phases of life and (in his case) death applied to so much more than just sexuality, because that's what _queer _sounded like to him, and it was what Sherlock had done to him in more than one sense. He'd had more than enough time to get to grips with that on a theoretical level, but the practicalities of it were just, as in all things, that little bit more complex.

So was he John Watson, heterosexual with a particular proclivity to Sherlock Holmes? Was he John Watson, bisexual? Was he John Watson, queer? Did he _have _to be any of those? Could he just be John Watson, part of Holmes-and-Watson, and also more, himself, just in love, really?

Back at home, he googled _gay sex_, not for the first time of course, because he was a blogger after all, a man of the internet waves though he still didn't know how to type (and savoured how that somehow made it more like physical writing, a small form of resistance), a child of the last puffs of flower power and love and later of ambiguity and fear in a world made out of so many perspectives it hurt sometimes.

_Gay sex _brought him all kinds of joys and horrors, just like life. Sex, such a strange, quiet word for such a mirror of the crazy ineptitude of life. The appeal was far greater when he imagined Sherlock doing some of the things GayTube offered up to him.

Fucking Sherlock. It was a dream, literally and figuratively. It was something that had sometimes got him so turned on just thinking about it that he'd even, once, had to go wank in the loo at the Yard – after that he'd tried to keep a lid on that particular image, though it hadn't always worked. It was a visceral thing of different senses, of trying to imagine being that close to him, getting that trust from him, sharing the reins for a bit. He really didn't know if it would ever happen, if it could; if it was something Sherlock would want, could want, ever. He felt glad for time; time that had returned to them, because they would need it with this, and it was the most beautiful thing life could have restored to him, and it was Bill's voice that delivered it, a voice from not so long ago, sitting in a loose circle of tight grief: _time; time to fill; time to use_.

But there was more, and the shift of reality that they'd found themselves in had pressed that upon him with an insistence he seemed to be ready to examine now. He had a bit of a nervous giggle at himself and the world that was forming itself around him as he realised that he didn't think he would object to being fucked by Sherlock; it was a new territory, not to think about, because his fantasies hadn't completely shied away from it, but new to think about in a way that linked it to possibility – just the thought of it was enough to both turn him on and experience a rush of very real apprehension. The image of Sherlock leaning over him, gazing down at him in that intense way, trying to suss out from the data if he was okay as he pushed their bodies closer together, and then into each other, a new kind of connectedness – it was a shocking, visual idea that left him a bit breathless and a lot aroused. He didn't even know if it was something Sherlock had ever done or even wanted to do, but it was insistent, the thought, pushing up between other, unrelated things.

He thought about erasing his internet history, because though he didn't know of any time when Sherlock had done so since the beginning of his second life, he knew Sherlock to be very capable of hacking into his laptop in a matter of seconds; but then refrained, because why shouldn't he see it if he went looking for it – if John allowed himself to be woken up by the hum of Sherlock's voice in his ear, narrating the hand on his cock until his threads parted, his fibres disconnected, then well, Sherlock probably wouldn't be surprised by finding this on his computer.

He sat for a bit, and then decided to try some self-therapy by going to shop for food. Surely carrots and cauliflowers would be absolutely unjudgmental.

–

He sent Harry a text after the shopping, because Sherlock's dislike of phoning seemed to be rubbing off on him, and tried to ignore the horrible realisation that he hadn't contacted her, _at all_, and that she hadn't contacted him, _at all_, though she must have heard, the news had been all over the country, everyone abuzz with it for – precisely, he'd counted – six days, and even Harry wouldn't have been able to keep shielded from the world for six whole days.

_How have you been?  
John_

he sent after trying out different things that all amounted to _are you drinking_? He closed the laptop and the undiscovered depths of the world of _gay sex _that he'd left open and went outside; the lightness of the city, opening up like a new lung under the touch of spring, was too inviting to resist, and he went without a moment's hesitation to the small park where Sherlock had re-materialised, a mass of cells and blood and thoughts that he had judged lost to the world and that was now restored to it in a twisted shift of normality. Under the patient touch of the sun the sad trees were becoming slightly less sad, and things were nice and only barely believable, as he sat on a bench, reading the novel that he had been reading before Sherlock came back and life had taken over from art the driver's wheel of the fast car that was reality for a bit, muddling the narrative. It was a crime novel, and he amused himself for a while trying to imagine with how much exasperation and condescension Sherlock would react to it.

Then, Harry's response dropped into his inbox:

_doing all right actually  
and you? it must be weird  
harry_

and he liked the sound of that, and he recalled with something of guilt that she had tried several times to be there for him during the bleak time of Sherlock's absence and she had sometimes even somewhat succeeded. He really should have thought about contacting her before.

_Extremely weird. Say, Sherlock's  
out for a couple of days. Want  
to catch up? I can make mum's  
mince pie.  
John_

And he still knew her well enough to know that she would have scowled at that, and he laughed softly at the

_ill come as long as you DONT  
__make that  
harry_

and texted her the update on his address (well, the return to old times, really), and hoped that she would be somewhat receptive to him, that they could maybe spend some time together as siblings, that he wouldn't want to kill her by the end of the evening; but she was so volatile that it was hard to predict.

–

Harry was gay. This was more or less straight-forward; she was gay in way that Irene Adler clearly wasn't, though it was her label of choice (obviously drawn most to women, living with a female partner – but thoroughly accepting of male clients and, more tellingly, deeply touched and intrigued by Sherlock's own particular kind of pull, which was something John could relate to intimately, even if he kind of hated that she had been able to see it so easily – _look at us both_, only making it harder) and Clara also wasn't (re-married by now to a husband with a baby on the way, if what John had heard was correct). Harry had only ever had girlfriends, had only ever been able to see herself with a woman, had never, she once told John, felt more than just a fleeting aesthetic appreciation for a man.

She was also a lot less of a mess than he had feared; she was completely sober and had brought non-alcoholic beer. She was awkward, short and blonde and blushing, standing around the kitchen as he finished his clumsy attempt at a vegetarian curry, and then she was willing, complimenting him on it though it really wasn't that special.

Because of this, because of the feeling of gratitude at the fact that she really seemed to be trying, and his genuine hopeful happiness when she informed him that she'd been going to the AA meetings with an atypical regularity, he said it: "When did you know you were gay, Harry?"

She sent him a look over her non-alcoholic pint. "When I realised that all of the weird tingly feelings I had around girls weren't exactly heterosexual," she said.

He considered. The weird tingly feelings he had around Sherlock also weren't exactly heterosexual, but there were no _men _as a distinct group that prompted those.

"And has there ever been an exception?" he asked, trying to be casual.

She thought it over, then shook her head. "Not really. I get along well with blokes, but that's mostly _because _I usually don't want to shag them." He was glad that she didn't press him for the reason for this conversation, about twenty years overdue.

But then she said: "It's pretty great when people surprise themselves, though," and she sounded smarter than he remembered, but then he'd mostly seen her drunk lately, and there was something of a question in her eye as she scooped up another bit of aubergine.

He cleared his throat. "I guess it is."

She then asked about Sherlock, carefully, as if testing a limit he didn't know he had in place, and it was hard to really tell her anything that didn't make it sound like he was crazy – he said to her how strange it had all been, and how glad and angry at the same time he had been, and how things seemed to be settling into some kind of balance now; though he wasn't sure at all that that was true. She didn't really seem to understand him, but then that was hardly her fault, as he picked and chose his way through the details that he thought safe to share with her.

Their goodbye was awkward, as he tried to suss out whether she would appreciate a hug in her sober state, and then halfway closing the gap between them just as she stepped backwards.

"Well," she said, slightly grimacing, "this was nice. Thanks, John."

"Thank you," he brought out, and she lingered for an additional second before stepping out into the evening. He watched her go. His sister, still bound to him by so much that they couldn't dissolve, even if she was a near on impossible element in a universe of uncaring probability.

The next time he texted her, two days later, because he felt that he had to try to uphold a habit of contact with her, her answering sentence was riddled with obvious spelling mistakes and he felt the all too familiar flush of deep disappointment, and a small kind of rage igniting, at her, at himself, at whatever it was inside her that she couldn't fight.

Despite himself, because he couldn't know what Sherlock was dealing with; it had to be pretty massive if it was taking him eight full days to get a handle on, he texted him.

_Harry drinking again.  
All right?_

And Sherlock responded rather quickly, considering that it was five in the morning in Peru, and it was quite breathtaking how much Sherlock did what he needed him to in that moment:

_She's an idiot. All right.  
Coming back tomorrow.  
SH_

because of course there was so much more going on, and addiction was a problem Sherlock had intimately known to be like being tangled in a strange spiders' web of sorts – and of course , though John didn't know, it was possible that right now, the web was closing around him again in a way that he'd have to struggle hard to resist – but then in that moment, it was the only thing that could have helped, precisely because it didn't try to help.

The feeling of relief that swept over him at _coming back tomorrow _was a bit like an avalanche, and he had to close his eyes against it, because it was hard to see for the light shining through, and God, he was such a sentimental fool these days.

–

Sherlock didn't respond to his question of when he'd be landing and if he needed John to pick him up at the airport, and John thought that maybe that was just a bit too much like being a normal couple, so he resisted the urge to look up the timetables of all possible flights coming in from Lima.

He was called in and went to pull his weight at the clinic, the optimistic but still treacherous weather having brought many people to fall ill with early-year bronchitis and ferocious colds desperate to turn into pneumonias, because he needed to not allow Sherlock to push him into the slot of waiting partner, and then Sarah was extremely pleasant to him; apparently she was someone deeply under the influence of the weather, and he had a great time talking to her, so it worked out fine.

When he stepped through the door into the living room, having followed the string of violin music that wafted down to meet him with a ridiculous excitement, Sherlock was stark naked in the middle of it, violin shouldered and held suggestively somehow, as though it was a dirty sex prop, and there went all of his feelings of _being a normal human being is nice sometimes_.

"Hello," Sherlock said after he'd brought a sequence of music to its climax, mouth already shaping into a sly grin with the new streak of mischievousness that he sometimes had now; that, and Sherlock being naked in the living room, and Sherlock actually literally saying _hello_ – new things to put into the list of _things that never used to happen, and now do_. John felt more exposed than Sherlock was at that smile, knowing that Sherlock could tell exactly from his face and the way he held his body how much he wanted to lunge forward and wrap himself around him and stay with him in the throes of sex until the world ended. Just like Sherlock to make him feel like he was being observed like a caged animal while _Sherlock _was the one playing the violin without any clothes on.

"Living on the edge a bit, aren't you?" he said, trying to mask some of his immediate need, "it might have been Mrs. Hudson coming up."

Sherlock snorted. "As though I couldn't immediately tell it was you from the singularly obvious way you paddled up the street, struggled with the lock and then banged up the stairs with a slight remnant of your limp."

And then that wasn't unsettling in the least, and the most natural thing that John could do was bridge the four strides of leg (three, if measured in Sherlock's legs) separating them and take the violin from Sherlock with a slow, reverent movement (he felt a thrill at the way Sherlock allowed it, allowed him to touch this extension of him, this shrine at which he sometimes came to worship), put it on the table gently, and then tug at Sherlock, who melted down into his mouth, _there_, so there, so utterly tangible as he kissed John back with something of a desperation that was a bit new.

"Missed me, did you?" John asked, already slightly breathless as they broke apart.

Sherlock didn't respond, just gave him a long, searing version of the look as his hands came up to pull at John's t-shirt – _Christ, John, you know_, and that felt so much more like a confirmation than anything he could have said, and it was more thrilling than it had any right to be. He spent a moment leaning back, looking at Sherlock like Sherlock had looked at him after that first time, when John had joined him in bed – unapologetically nude, the canvas of his chest and stomach, marked by the scars, openly on display, his cock already hardening against John's hip. God, that body, so present nowadays, where was _just transport_ now, where was the wearing of robes over pyjamas now; he wanted to bury himself in it and trace time back to where the point must have been where Sherlock had looked down at himself and found that he didn't just _have_ a body, he _was _one.

"Christ," he sighed at the sight of him. He toed off his shoes as quickly as he could, undid his belt himself and tried to get his trousers off with some effort, pulling down his pants with them, just wanting to get naked, really naked, only holding still for long enough for Sherlock to tug his t-shirt up over his head.

"Don't you dare keep your socks on," Sherlock said lightly against him, but the way he brought his hands down the stretch of John's back, dragging his fingernails over the skin with just enough pressure to hurt a little, and then cupping his palms firmly around John's buttocks spoke of a seriousness that made John reel a bit.

"Wouldn't dare," he breathed, twisting uncomfortably to get the offending items off while still trying to maintain the closeness of their bodies. Sherlock pulled him up slightly by cradling his bum, so that he was standing on his tiptoes, bringing their cocks together, and Sherlock hissed before licking a way into John's mouth so urgently that John's knees struggled to remember what their function was. Who was he, again?

He reached upward and looped his arms around Sherlock's neck as well as he could, savouring the feeling of him, the body arching into his touch, _SH_, SH back here with him, mind and body focused on him with an intensity that was startling.

"I wish I'd cleared – the table," Sherlock said, the hitch in his voice as John rubbed against him very satisfying.

"So you could fuck me on it?" John said, then groaned, as the implication reached him a bit belatedly; and the idea of Sherlock actually tidying up for once, painstakingly clearing the table of all of his chemistry equipment, his books, his microscope, his growths, his fluids so he could shag John on it would have been extremely funny if it hadn't been such a turn-on right then, as Sherlock's cock was swelling against him.

"Yes," Sherlock growled, _yes _with its right to be in their lives, and smashed their mouths together with some force, bruising the curve of John's lips.

"Bed will – will do," John said, voice cracking under the weight of it, the press of the _yes _that was between them.

And that they couldn't be bothered to go up the stairs, that it was Sherlock's bed, where they hadn't actually spent any time together yet, where John had tried for the past eight nights to get a whiff of Sherlock back with him, seemed meaningful for a moment, but then Sherlock pushed him down on it with a heated insistence, eyes glittering with a specific kind of mania, and that took out all of the meaning that existed in the universe and pinned it on itself so there really was nothing else left to contemplate.

Sherlock descended on him, trapping his hips between his knees, biting at his neck – then, suddenly, stilled completely.

"Sherlock?" John panted, and froze halfway through an arch upward.

"You," Sherlock said, then chuckled darkly, liquidly into John's neck, and moved back into it, running his tongue over the small pain of his teeth, "you slept here while I was away."

"I – yeah," John said, too aroused to be embarrassed about it, not even wondering how Sherlock could tell.

"How – how _sentimental_, John," Sherlock said between licks and nips at his neck and downward, his clavicle, and then – _ohgod_– his scar, the sensation muted by the damaged nerve endings but the implication raw as Sherlock's tongue felts its way over the rough curls of flesh, tracing the pattern of the shrapnel with rapt attention; it was new, none of his girlfriends had enjoyed bringing his war wound into sex, though Mary had sometimes touched it as though contemplating it, but then she had come the closest, hadn't she, while Sherlock was just there, already, in the place where so many body-alien things had had to be fished out of the broken border of his skin, and accepting his mouth on that ruin, on that crime scene that only Sherlock could ever really understand, felt both not okay and so okay that nothing else in the universe ever could be again. He couldn't fight the raw sound coming up in his throat, a half-sob, a strangled groan. Sherlock took his time with the scar, even raking his teeth over the ridges and edges of it, and then finished off by kissing it, lightly, so lightly, like a small goodbye.

"Sherlock, you are... No one's ever – done that before," John breathed, and Sherlock sat up on him, his arse resting on John's thighs, erection at half mast against his stomach.

"Good?" he asked, the confidence from before slipping slightly on his face; a hint of apprehension, a shadow of doubt.

"Bit not good," John said, because it was true, but then also, because it was true as well: "and a lot good."

Sherlock looked down at him, face unreadable. "You extraordinary man," he said, quietly, wonderingly, and then his eyes widened, as though he was surprised that it was him who'd said it.

"How sentimental," John said, and reached up to cup Sherlock's face, pulling him down into a new kiss.

Sherlock took control of it again, tongue slipping between John's lips, threading his hand in John's hair and pulling at it slightly. John hummed in approval, feeling giddy as the warm, wet pressures of their tongues slid together inside his mouth.

He reached down between them to take Sherlock's erection in his hand.

And Sherlock responded with such a startled sound, such an abrupt breaking of the kiss, such a jerky recoil that John let him go on instinct.

"What?" he squeaked, hands scrabbling at Sherlock's chest.

"I –" Sherlock began to say, staring at him with a panic on his face that made a jolt of fear shoot through John.

"What is it?" he pressed, urgently. "Don't you want me to –"

"I don't understand," Sherlock said, eyes wild, "I just don't – I don't –"

"Take it easy," John said, curling his hands around Sherlock's hips, grip loose, "just take it easy."

Chest heaving rapidly with something else than arousal, Sherlock hid his face in his hands for a long, long moment, and though John really, really wished he hadn't, he allowed the moment to stretch until Sherlock finally pulled his hands away and rested them, lightly, on John's stomach, small points of weight, of heat.

"I'm sorry," he said, and that was so strange, so rare, that John almost felt worse because of it.

"What's going on?" he asked, carefully.

Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment, but then, mercifully, a small grace, he looked at John. The anguish on his face calmed, he seemed to be trying to get it under control, to slip the mask in place, but it only half worked, and John could tell that the confidence with which he'd been standing in their living room stark naked and with which he'd brought them to this bed had shattered.

"I thought I was all right," Sherlock muttered, quietly. "When you sent me... When you sent me that text, I was all right."

"The text? About me touching you, you mean?" John tried for a second to get up, a subconscious desire to get closer again, but the way Sherlock was seated on him made it pretty impossible, and he had to settle for tightening his hands around Sherlock's hips.

"Yes," Sherlock said, bypassing _evidently_ for once. "I was all right. I was –" he grimaced, "– _happy_, even. It was annoying how happy I was. It was very distracting."

John took a moment to process that. "But... you're not happy now?"

"I don't know," he said after a beat, and John knew that that was the worst thing for him, the worst thing, not knowing, not understanding. Not being able to grasp the lines that connected things to each other, the threads that he used for getting across, across spaces, across times. And it was heartbreaking, the frustration and fear that were so large he couldn't control them, showing themselves like traitors on that enticing face. It was heartbreaking to watch on Sherlock – who wanted to control everything, as evidenced by this thing exactly; who collapsed when he couldn't have control; who had broken down in front of that fire in Baskerville when he had for a moment thought that his control had proven false; who had often mixed his own drugs so he could feel like he was still in charge; who led John everywhere, _take my hand_; who only accepted control from things as abstract as music and thought; who had that one time that control had slipped from him jumped from _a fucking roof_ and had spent two years destroying, as he had put it, everything of Moriarty's, just to regain that upper hand again; who had said to John _waste of valuable time _and had sucked him off almost without preamble, guiding himself and John to a climax entirely of his own making.

John had felt that something was off about it, but the extent of Sherlock's distress was new to him as his flatmate, his friend, his infuriating wanker, his lover, his inspiration pressed his hands into his eyes, mouth twitching under the weight of this moment, under John's eyes on him, the contact of which must have felt like another attack on his control in this moment of offering up his weak parts.

"Sherlock," he said, trying not to sound strangled with the unbelievable helpless tenderness he was feeling, "it's all right."

"It's not," Sherlock said, not taking away the hands pushing at his own face.

"It is," John insisted.

"It is _not._" The familiar insistence, the _shut up John you have no clue what you're talking about you __idiot_, at least, was the same. Sherlock took a breath, let the hands fall to John again, re-establishing that small bit of contact, a small miracle. "I can't give you what you need."

John heard _so if you need something that I can't give you, you should get it from someone who can. it's only logical _in his brain as though a recorder had started playing. It was all wrong.

John opened his mouth to say _yes you can _but then he didn't, because he wasn't sure if it was true, and Sherlock saw through any and all of the inane reassurances that he could give anyway, because he could probably see right now that a cold wave of doubt was surfacing in John – if Sherlock was really such a top that he wouldn't let John touch his cock, at all, then that... It wasn't something that felt like it would be enough.

Sherlock was watching him silently. "It's not okay for you," he murmured, the clinical tone of his observation only slightly more inflected than when he would say _the gardener did it_. And he lifted himself off John, the long lines of his body defeated, curling back on themselves; a far cry from what he had been before, a canvas holding a violin, proud, open, willing. He sat down next to John against the headboard, leaning the back of his head against the wall, removing himself so effectively John felt a bit like crying as he worked himself to a sitting position as well.

They sat next to each other, both staring out in front of them, the bridges snapped between their bodies, the momentum slowed down to nothing.

John felt a bit numb, a bit hurt, a lot everything. He closed his eyes against the soft colours of Sherlock's bedroom; Sherlock next to him was silent as a statue.

But things weren't _lost_, they were still here, breathing the same air, Sherlock wasn't lost to him again, he had scaled that wall, they were on the same side together again; and he wasn't just Holmes-and-Watson, he was John Watson, who was good at fixing things that had to do with Sherlock, who had often found blind spots that Sherlock had overlooked – in himself, never in anything else, of course – and who sometimes made Sherlock _see_. A microscope, but for feelings. "You said you were happy, before, when I texted you," he said, tentatively.

"Yes," Sherlock affirmed, voice a dark shudder.

"Why was that?"

Sherlock shifted. John dared a look at him, and, a chance, a thing of wonder, Sherlock was looking at him, too. "It was... pleasant to think about," he said, wincing at himself, looking as though it physically hurt to say that.

"So you thought you'd want it?" John said, allowing his body to shift a bit closer to Sherlock's. Decreasing space. Increasing presence.

"Yes," Sherlock said, and the tone of suppressed anxiety made John want to wrap his arms around him, this bundle of bones and scars and fears, so seemingly confident at times, and now so utterly, utterly undone by his fear of letting go. This wasn't just a matter of wanting to top, he realised. It was a matter of being afraid of not topping. _Gay sex _on the internet had taught him at least that much: there was a big difference.

"And do you?" he said, and felt like a character in a soap opera; language, its patterns, its clichés, not stretchy enough to fit around them as they sat there, but trying, pushing at its boundaries.

Sherlock considered seriously, as he did with all questions he didn't know the answer to. "In theory, yes," he finally said, and that seemed to calm him down a bit, theory, science, rocks to hang onto in a confusing waterfall; when he looked at John, his gaze had steadied a bit.

"Maybe we just need to be a bit more careful with the practice?" John said, making it a question to see how it would bounce of Sherlock, how it would resonate.

"I – maybe," Sherlock said, but he looked a bit cold, a bit lost, a lot confused.

John deliberately brought a hand to his shoulder, a small bridge, a restoration. "Has no one ever touched you, Sherlock?" he asked, frowning. He remembered Sherlock saying he hadn't had much experience, but then he'd gone on to wank and suck John to such easy orgasms that it had been a difficult thing to believe. And he'd accepted so many of John's touches – John's attentions to his scars that first time, John with his hands in his hair at the breakfast table, the hug in the shower, the cuddling in bed, most of which he had initiated, even; it wasn't the contact that frightened him, but the sexuality of it, John supposed, the idea that someone would be doing things to him that would make him respond in ways that he maybe hadn't expected or couldn't control.

"Not that way," Sherlock said, grimacing. "I've... done things. To others, mostly. It wasn't... Reciprocity wasn't required. Most of them didn't mind. I've never..." His eyes fixed on John with not a small amount of wary trepidation. "I've never wanted anyone to give something back – until now."

John looked at him for a moment. Who were these people, these fools? Who could accept something like that from Sherlock Holmes and not want to share something in return? He felt a strange flutter of protectiveness that was rather out of place, he realised, because Sherlock had, after all, simply done it the way he'd wanted to, and it really wasn't any of his business how Sherlock shagged people – or at least, it hadn't been until now, and now things were apparently so different for Sherlock it seemed as though there was hardly a point of comparison.

"I want to give something back," he blurted out almost before he was aware of it.

Sherlock closed his eyes.

"At the speed that you want me to," John said, with emphasis, as he squeezed his hand around Sherlock's shoulder.

A small laugh escaped Sherlock, apparently involuntarily; a tinier, no less heavy echo of what had followed _you could _in the phone call that had pulled up so many screens between them, none of them real in the end – a huff of breath, not of amusement but of disbelief, unbelieving of such trust, of such conviction, of such love, feeling as though he deserved none of it.

"You," Sherlock said under his breath, shaking his head a little, "you."

And it was him who closed the gap, in the end, or at least, who opened the gap; it was him who unlocked the protective knot of his arms and waited for John to slip between them – a tangle of biology, of neurology, sprawled against each other, catching on each other, the body as a membrane, selectively letting things in, carefully choosing what to keep and what to work back out.

John said, unplanned, randomly, slightly out of sync with the rhythm of reality, against the miraculous, alternative beat of Sherlock's pulse against his forehead: "You're better at being alive than being dead," and it was as if Sherlock actually knew what to make of that, as he tightened his arms around John into a willing cage, to be opened at the right password.

Only he didn't have a clue. He didn't have a clue what this silence was trying to tell him. If only he could read the things Sherlock didn't say.

But he couldn't.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

John eventually left Sherlock in his bedroom, smoking silently by the window, the sheet around him as a sort of comical loincloth – as John stood by the door and glanced back, he was reminded of that time in Buckingham Palace, and one of the first real, unmistakable, wholly undeniable twinges of arousal he'd had looking at Sherlock's body, and he shook his head at himself silently. If he'd known the things that could and would happen, he probably would've died then and there from cardiac arrest.

It was nearing midnight. The flat was calm without them, without the energies sparking off between them, doused in the soft darkness that came from night after such a bright, vivid day. He stood for a second, trying to get a bit of a handle on the things that had just happened between them, and finding his grip to be extremely slippery. It felt like too much, really, too much for this hour of hybridity and vagueness. He looked at the tangle of clothes that they'd left on the floor – his clothes, so quickly removed, so easily shed, only to find that Sherlock was wearing layers of an entirely different kind.

They hadn't really talked more. Words had removed themselves from the situation at least for a little while. But Sherlock had allowed John to be near him, curled into the curve of his neck, and hadn't objected to his hands, slow and careful and all of the things that John had never thought Sherlock could ever need but now apparently did, finding a way across the expanses of chest, of shoulder, of neck, and then stopping there. He'd allowed his lips, now and then, hesitant, hopeful; he had offered no resistance but also no real response. And then he'd pulled away, slowly, as if regretting it somehow, and had gone to stand by the window.

And was it enough? John really didn't know and it was fucking terrifying.

He went over to his clothes, considered putting his pants on, and then thought _whatever for_. After what had just happened being bare seemed like the best way to move forward. He stared out of the window for a bit, watching the soft glow of the street lamps, unwavering. Beyond reality lay the city, a mirage, a pounding heart, a world so removed it was like watching it from a shore across an ocean. He sighed, wondered when he'd lost his feel for the heartbeat of London – and the answer was there, already: when he'd lost his feel for Sherlock's heartbeat, literally, when he'd felt around and his skin, still warm, not quite aware yet, offered him nothing, no flutter of life, no pulse. And now that honesty of the body had turned out to be a deception, like most things, in the end – and London was still rather remote for him, the past two years mostly a rush of depression and insomnia and mania and then later, when he was a bit better, limbs pulling together again, of fortifying himself, of painstakingly building and holding a _home _in the threatening, ceilingless space that was the city, trying to stop it from getting the same grip on him again.

He remembered how he'd felt getting into that cab on his way to the Yard. Like coming home. Just having Sherlock here again had made his concept of _home _change so much the city and its authorless space were included in it again. But right now, with Sherlock's silent puffing of smoke out into the sleep of millions, slipped out over them like clouds, London seemed as unreal to him as Sherlock.

He wanted to sleep. But he wasn't sure if he'd be able to without Sherlock near him, and it was obvious Sherlock wasn't going to sleep, not tonight – or maybe he was, but then it wouldn't be with John. That was more okay than John would have expected, actually; he wasn't exactly sure that his offering of renewed connection had been met halfway, though it had definitely not been rejected outright – but either way he understood quite well that Sherlock wanted some time on his own to go over things. That was, after all, what Sherlock _did_. And at least that was something that wasn't abnormal between people who had to figure out sex and what world it was that the word covered.

He realised that he hadn't even asked Sherlock about Peru. They had fallen into bed with an unconcerned finality, with the intention of emerging out of it again together and sharing other things after the sharing of bodies. Only the sharing of bodies hadn't quite gone to plan – because the plan _hadn't_ been sharing, not really, and John just really, truly, hadn't been aware of that. Honest questions would have to wait until the honest light of day. As he stared out over the flickering lights of night-time London, a strange kind of weariness came over him, as he thought of all the things left unresolved between them, and the thought was like a traitor, a thief in the night: _is it worth it?_

And then he didn't feel like a real person for a bit.

He eventually did put on his clothes, resisting the idea that it might be able to undo time a bit. He slipped out of the flat, into the extension of _home _that London could be, again, if he let it.

The city was soft, yielding. Spring was there even through the chilly creeping fingers of night; a small, barely noticeable hint of softness, of flowers pushing up beneath soil, of people dead returning to life. It would have been soothing, and it somehow still was, but it would have been moreso if he hadn't left Sherlock in 221B, alone, now even without the knowledge that John was in the flat with him, and John really didn't know if that meant anything to him, the fact that John had slipped out, had closed the door behind him in a soft click of wood and secrecy and hurt and things that were hidden even from John himself, and that Sherlock had probably seen with more clarity than he himself had.

He ended up in front of the entrance door to Mary's flat block in a sudden shift of consciousness; surprised to find himself there despite the fact that the knowledge that he was going there had been rushing through his head from the first step. He took a long while trying to put the pieces of a reason why he might be there together into a coherent whole and then really couldn't do it – it was all wrong, it had to do with being too insecure, too uncertain, of losing a hold on the things that made him him under the weight of Sherlock's eyes, of allowing that to blot out other certainties, like that he tried hard to be _good_, and that he _loved_ Sherlock; it was selfish, it was utterly reprehensible, incomprehensible, it was all of the things that he sometimes thought he was and didn't want to be. But then his feelings were no one's but his own and he rang the bell, incomprehensibly moved by the small, curly letters of her handwriting under it, just _Morstan_, not Mary, as though that were a secret she was trying to keep.

He knew she'd be up – they were both night cats, and had sat up together at times for hours-long ruminations and translations into action of life and love and sex and alcohol in the first, starkly infatuation-fueled weeks of their relationship, and then, a bit later, a bit further, they'd tried to avoid pushing the dark cloud of their morning moods into each other's faces, splitting the newspaper in half and hiding behind it, trading coffee over the table, milk, sugar, Mary.

He had a moment of complete and utter hatred for himself before the intercom flickered into life and the distances of technology muted what must have been surprise, and maybe annoyance, in her voice: "Hello?"

"Mary," he croaked, "it's –" _me. John. I don't know who it is, actually._

"Hello?" she asked again.

He touched the intercom involuntarily. "It's John," he said.

There was a silence, and he didn't know if it meant he'd have to repeat himself. Suddenly, the buzzer was a sound of alarm, slashing open the fabric of the slow, pleasant night air. He pushed open the door.

Then, it was like coming into himself, like snapping back into his body with the surprise of a rubber band, as though he'd been wound so tight he'd left himself.

"Fuck," he said out loud, and ran, leaving her probably with nothing but a stronger reason to wonder _who the hell was that man, anyway_, because who was he, doing that, who was he, not being able to regain himself without pulling her into it, fuck, what his life, what was his life.

She was more normal and balanced than he would ever be, and after half an hour sent him a text, stifled with formality, devoid of the tangle of dark dislike and hurt and confusion she might be feeling, though who was he to try to imagine what she was feeling, really: _What are you doing?_

The truth was:

_I'm an arsehole who needed  
reassurance and couldn't pull  
myself from the idea that you  
would offer it even though I've  
done nothing to deserve it. _

What he sent was:

_I'm very sorry. Trying to figure  
things out in a way that only makes  
it worse. I'm sorry if I disturbed you._

Maybe it wasn't even that different.

She didn't respond, probably couldn't think of anything but _Yes, disturbing is the right word for it._

And it was a bit too much like mourning again, beating a path down the streets alone, surrounded by a lot of people enjoying the still-slightly-warm night air that seemed to be pregnant with possibility, and he hated himself for it, because _why_, his mouth had been on Sherlock's not an hour ago, and he had been thrumming and living under his hand, and why wasn't it enough? He hadn't really known what he was in for, true, when Sherlock had wrapped those long fingers around his neck and pulled him down into the kiss that would not seal their fates but rather open them, but he'd made this choice a long time ago, crumbling orbits ago, even before he knew that it was a choice, and even though he was sometimes a lot of things that he didn't want to be, following things through was something that came as naturally to him as hopping into a cab and almost without second thoughts shooting a man for someone he'd met 36 hours before.

_Is it worth it?_ He thought back to the thrill of excitement that had quivered in the pit of stomach when he'd come through their door earlier and there had been violin music, _Sherlock upstairs_, Sherlock returned from that other side once more, and how everything had receded again into small, insignificant details on the fabric of life, giving space to the light of Sherlock shining through. It was quite unlike anything.

_It is completely, utterly worth it, you fool._

He only needed to think it, once, not say it to himself out loud several times like he'd had to with _Sherlock is dead_, because there was really no doubt this time, was there, not even a whisper of things relegated to dreams.

–

He glanced at the luminescent numbers on the screen of his phone as he slowly climbed the stairs to his bedroom. 02:19

It was 05:03 when he descended them again. It was 05:22 when he finally coughed up the courage to knock on Sherlock's door. It was 05:23 when Sherlock said, in a calm neutral voice John couldn't pretend not to have heard: "No, John." _Wrong._

It was 07:18 when the sun came up, and sleep was a small kind of war slipping in and out of bed with him.

–

Sherlock came out of his room looking absolutely fine. Looking great, actually. That somehow rubbed John the wrong way; what had stared back at him in the bathroom mirror had been a wreck, a collision of the different realities of night and day, with his eyes sunk low, the lines on his forehead tensed like pen strokes. Sherlock looked none the worse for wear, face smooth and blank, a palimpsest with its upper layer painstakingly cleared, betraying nothing to the naked eye of the history and languages underneath, clothes sharp, not a curl of hair different than usual; swathed in normality, his own particular abnormal kind of everyday. It felt irrationally unfair. The earlier night with his incomprehensible walk to Mary's seemed remote in the daylight, and John had decided to treat it as the mental aberration that it was or that he had decided it was, a strange, selfish, extremely stupid thing that had been necessary to jolt him to _it is completely, utterly worth it, you fool_, but he still felt overwhelmingly unequipped to deal with whatever would be coming at him today.

"Lestrade texted," Sherlock, eyes fixed on his phone, said in lieu of _good morning_, but that was one for the list of _things that always used to happen, and still do_.

"Interesting?" John asked, feeling exhausted, trying to derive some small comfort from the heat of his tea cup between his fingers.

"Quite," Sherlock said with a frown, as though he couldn't believe it. "Disappearance of a corpse from the morgue of St Mary's hospital; corpse of a high-profile politician – Smithson, you've read the papers, I presume – who died of cardiac arrest while on ski vacation; though apparently there was some doubt about the accidental nature of the death; no sign of forced entry; morgue was left completely locked; surveillance cameras in the cold chamber show the presence of the body until it just disappears into thin air."

"They have cameras in their cold chamber?" John asked.

Sherlock looked at him for the first time, decidedly unimpressed. John felt the stir of an icy annoyance, fueled by fatigue and the need to be looked at honestly. "Not the point," Sherlock said.

"Isn't it?" John asked, just to be contrary.

Sherlock seemed to feel it and pulled a face. "Can you come or not?"

"If you want me to," John said, trying not to feel like he was fishing for a reassurance he already knew he wasn't likely to get anytime soon – there was barely enough breath between them for _good morning_, let alone for something that could be an equivalent of _of course; I'd be lost without my blogger_.

Sherlock said nothing, just raised his eyebrows at him.

"Fine," he gave in, because who was he kidding, anyway – he would have followed Sherlock everywhere, into every dodgy street, every red lights district, every underground gangster network, every drugs den, every fucking crack of the fucking earth.

–

In the cab, recalling with something of a belated shock how Sherlock had kissed his scar the night before, John tried: "So how was Peru?"

Sherlock said, lip curled in an all-too familiar, staunch unwillingness: "_Humid_."

And they both sat, feeling the waves of their frustration with each other colliding. John was a little alarmed at how easily things had swerved off-road.

Where was _you_, where was _bit not good, and a lot good_, where was _you're better at being alive than being dead?_

Late-night fairytales proving a little too simple in the warring, naked complexity of day.

–

They were pointed to the morgue by a harried-looking nurse, who gave only the barest flicker of recognition when she laid eyes on them.

The sound of Greg's voice greeted them before the sight of him did. He was arguing heatedly with another D.I., who seemed to be completely unimpressed with him, jabbing his finger into his chest in an aggressive way that made John feel indignant on his behalf.

"You had no right to invite him in, Lestrade," the man snarled, and just then noticed them coming through the door.

"No," he called at them, face twisted, overthrowing Greg's simultaneous _Sherlock_, "you can't be in here!"

John felt Sherlock next to him drawing himself up to his full, impressive height. Sherlock who was already agitated, and then denied access to a crime scene – this would be a sight to behold. He stalked over to the two officers; John hurried after him, feet sounding too loud on the cold stone floor of the morgue.

"Oh, hello," Sherlock said, lacing superficial pleasantry with a deep, tangible acid and condescension, "and who might you be?"

Greg caught John's eye in a look that was part anger, part _uh-oh_, and part _I'm going to enjoy this so much_.

"Detective Inspector Davis," the man responded, sniffing, exuding an exaggerated dignity in the face of a Sherlock Holmes with the air of a stalking cheetah who'd spotted a lone gazelle, "head of the Missing Persons department. No need to introduce yourself," he added with derision, as Sherlock opened his mouth.

"You know why I'm here, then?" Sherlock said, mask perfectly in place.

"You need to leave right now," Davis said, "D.I. Lestrade here was under the impression that a corpse disappearing is his department, when it's clearly not. And I don't need amateurs mucking about with the evidence."

Greg made a sharp sound of dissent, and seemed ready to argue, but when he looked at Sherlock, he snapped his mouth shut. He knew inevitable when he saw it. Sherlock smiled at Davis, a smile of knives, of glass, of razors; John felt a chill just looking at it. His eyes were fixed with a deadly accuracy on Davis, then flicked up and down him, collecting data in that neuron-fast way of his, so quickly John wasn't sure anyone but him and probably Greg would have noticed.

"Of course," Sherlock said, stressing the sibilant into a hiss, then looked around the morgue in mock-resignation. "In that case, _detective inspector_, I can only offer you my _sincere_ hope that your people have more sense than you seem to have to protect themselves against the bodies in here." They all stared at him for a beat. "Because," he continued smoothly, "you appear to have some _dead person on your face_." His eyes were glittering with something more than just malice, and he removed his gloves with care before pointing a long finger straight at the corner of Davis' mouth. There was nothing there, as far as John could tell; only the scab of a quite large, healing cold sore.

"What are you on about, you madman?" Davis spat, and John, despite himself and his lingering annoyance and anxiety over Sherlock, felt his dislike for the inspector hardening even more. There were only a very select number of people who were allowed to call Sherlock a madman; all of them had had snipers focusing on them at one point, and they had well and fully earned the right.

"Exposure of the sore to putrescine, worsening the infection," Sherlock said, every syllable a measured bite, "through contact with decomposing flesh and moulds that favour the human corpse." He wrinkled his nose. "I can actually _smell it_."

Davis's hand came up to cup his cheek, as if trying to shield himself off. "What?" he snapped, eyes shading over with disbelief and a twinge of beginning horror.

"Deadly if ingested in high doses, so I'd get it looked at, if I were you, _detective inspector_," Sherlock said, ice punctuating his every word. "And if I were you I'd take some time to have a small talk with anyone you happen to have kissed lately with that on your face. You might have passed them something else than just herpes."

John felt his hand moving upward, ready to take its placating place on Sherlock's arm, because he felt the situation shifting into more than dangerous; but then he restrained himself, because there was a new kind of cold fire in Sherlock's voice that he wasn't sure how to put out, and he was still unwilling, himself, to be that person again, to step into the line of fire again.

Sherlock took a small step forward, not quite close enough to be objectively threatening, but definitely into Davis' comfort zone, who looked gobsmacked. "And I don't need to tell you that that's not just your wife," he hissed, "judging by the shifting tan lines you have under your wedding band, indicating regular removal and enough flippancy about the affair to not put the ring back on in the same spot before visiting the tanning beds you seem to love and by the new, discreet faux-silver chain around your neck – new, I can see the zinc allergy kicking in on your neck, sorry your lover doesn't care enough to buy you a real silver chain – which isn't something a normal friend would give you nor is it your wife's style, judging from the pompous golden cuffs you're wearing which are with near certainty a present from her, probably for Christmas; formality and emotional distance of that gift suggests long-time unhappy marriage, newness and genericness of the chain as well as the fact that the giver doesn't know yet that you're allergic to zinc suggests new affair, probably not the only one judging from the different tan lines on your finger; and from the mis-aligned buttons on your shirt and the very recent bruise of the new love bite you've tried to unsuccessfully cover up with your collar without the assistance of a mirror I estimate it probable that she or, also not unlikely, he, judging from the lack of frivolity on the chain and the aggression of the love bite, is a member of your team or otherwise working in this morgue." He delivered the last word slowly after the astounding speed of what preceded it, dragging it out like a torture, drawing out the _r_, dropping the _g _like it was a small bomb, and John blinked. It was the first time he'd been around this happening in two years. And God, it was still so incredible, so utterly brilliant that he felt thrown off balance for a bit.

Davis looked for a few seconds as though nothing had happened, then his face twisted in anger; his hands curled into fists at his side. "Just who exactly do you –" he began, furiously, lifting one of the fists in an uncontrolled jerk.

John and Greg both moved in as if it had been agreed between them; John tugged Sherlock back a step to get him further away from Davis, and Sherlock allowed it, while Greg moved in between them, a shield to both of them.

"Sherlock Holmes, that's who he is," he said, and John could tell that he was more than just a little angry, though he sounded collected, "and this _is _my division, Davis. This case was being re-opened as a murder case before the body went missing."

"Besides, it can hardly count as a pressing disappearance if it's already a stiff," Sherlock said, sounding almost pleased, in a cold, hard way. John took away the hand that was still resting on Sherlock's sleeve; at the loss of it, Sherlock glanced over to him, and John was a little shaken at the intensity of the icy rage that sat under the superficial calmness of his features. Sherlock looked away before he could respond with an expression of his own.

"Fuck you, Lestrade," Davis was saying, trembling.

"No need to re-direct your frustration," Sherlock said, voice level, curling his lip.

"Sherlock," Greg warned calmly, not turning around. "We're taking over, Davis. Phone Ruskin if you're not convinced. We'll have a briefing later."

Davis looked like a man who had just been told that, well, that he had corpse exposure on his face, John supposed. He opened his mouth to argue, but Greg stared him down silently, in a short competition of wills. John could sense Sherlock almost physically straining forward again to confront him, but he stayed where he was – it took John a second to realise that he'd put his hand back on his arm, though he wasn't sure if that was what was steadying him. Davis suddenly caught _his_ eye, and said: "Fuck _you_, too," and then he was off, almost stumbling.

"Well, that was an effective destruction," Greg observed calmly, turning to Sherlock, mouth tense.

"Congratulations, Lestrade," Sherlock said, almost easily, and as he looked at Greg John could see the anger retreating from his face slowly, folding over into the more familiar vague annoyance, "you have now finally been proven to not be the most annoying policeman in Britain."

And Greg almost smiled. "Talk to me," he said.

Sherlock did. "I'll need to see the tapes, of course. Not just the ones from the night of the disappearance, but going back to when the body was brought in. I need to see the cold chamber and get samples from the slab on which the body was stored. I need to see the forensics rapport – don't look at me like that, Lestrade –" he said, reading Greg's face of resigned unwillingness to open up closed-off paperwork, "you'd have had to do it anyway; it's the only way to re-open a case. Speaking of which, I need access to all of the evidence that got the case to be approved for re-opening." He smiled grimly. "I'll need to talk to detective inspector Davis, I'm afraid. I was trying to rile him up; it doesn't actually transfer via just touch, but that putrescine exposure on that wound might actually be relevant. John," he said, suddenly, voice dropping a bit lower, "can you do that for me? I'll tell you what I need to know." The request was atypical; normally Sherlock all but ordered him around on their cases.

"Yeah, that'll save us all another murder inquiry," he agreed.

"And I need to talk to all of the people who work here and who have access to this place. No exceptions," Sherlock finished.

"Anything else?" Greg asked, looking partly exasperated, partly happy.

"Coffee," Sherlock said, and then to John's intense surprise, went out to get some, and brought back three cups, made exactly to their tastes.

He responded to Greg's layered look (_what the hell, he's getting us coffee; that was so wrong and so awesome; but hey, you look like shit, what happened, oh no, what's he done now_) with one that said _who the hell even knows anymore_.

–

Sherlock disappeared with the tapes, grudgingly delivered to him by the security guard manning the front desk of the morgue (John though about the familiar morgue at Bart's, and how he couldn't imagine it having a security guard instead of just small, secretly universe-sized Molly), saying something about an IT-and-digital-coding-gifted contact. Before he left, he passed John a note on which he'd scrawled in his spidery, looping handwriting what he needed to know from Davis; it was strange to hold in his hand, such a physical thing from someone who preferred to be mediated by screens and uniformly typed letters – he had only ever seen Sherlock's handwriting a couple of times, usually in barely legible add-ons to his shopping lists, requesting or demanding nicotine patches or some chemical compound or other, the number of exclamation marks directly proportional to his level of boredom. The list felt stupidly intimate to have in his pocket.

And then before he really left, Sherlock said this: "John, are you all right?" And the urgency in his eyes expressed a different expectation than an answer like _yeah, fine, you?_

What John could say was hardly better: "I'm not sure."

"Have you slept?" Sherlock's eyes flicked from him to the door of the hallway in which they were standing, as if checking that they were still alone.

"No," John said, because surely Sherlock knew that already just from looking at him and was only asking to... what? Express concern? Probably.

"Make sure you sleep at some point today. You're more use to me thinking on your feet," Sherlock instructed, but his tone was gentle, and John knew it was silly to take it as an apology for his coldness earlier, but it honestly felt like one; and then there was a moment of rushed, tumbling tenderness between them as Sherlock lightly curled his long fingers around his shoulder, leaned in and pressed his nose to John's forehead, the gesture by now somewhat like a kiss, though not quite, something that seemed to serve as _hello_ and _goodbye_ and _I'll be back_ and _are you okay _all at once. John grabbed his coat without really planning to and held him in place for a small moment; Sherlock didn't seem to mind, even seemed a little reluctant to pull back. It made John feel a lot better. And then he was gone, the familiar whirlwind, off to chase the tendrils of a trail.

–

Sherlock responded _Yes. SH_ to his _Are you home right now?_ so John made his way to Baker Street, intending to make true on _make sure you sleep at some point today_, nursing his hand that had come into contact with Davis' nose in a thoroughly satisfying, if not quite professional way, his total lack of sleep dogging him like a loyal pet.

When he stepped into the living room, there was the smell of food in the air, and there was a dark, scruffy figure on the couch, whose thin, dirt-flecked face turned to look at John, and at the sight of him folded even a bit more deeply into his oversized hoodie.

"Oh, hello," John said instinctively.

Sherlock stepped out of the kitchen holding a plate with a sandwich sitting on it – an actual sandwich, with white bread and lettuce and bacon, so he must have gone to the shop to get ingredients for it.

"This is the IT expert," he said lightly. "PJ, this is John," he told the boy, putting the plate in front of him. John got another flash of pale face and dark eyes as he tried very hard to present a non-threatening picture. The boy was fifteen at most. John felt a small lump in his chest at the idea that children as young as that were living on the streets in a supposedly wealthy country like theirs. PJ sat indecisively for a moment, before leaning over and picking up the sandwich. "He's going to help me with the tapes," Sherlock said, looking at the youngster, his tone curiously soft.

John nodded, wondering for a bit at the fact that Sherlock had apparently kept his homeless network intact and updated during his absence, as well as the fact that Sherlock had managed to be friendly enough to an adolescent living on the streets that he'd felt comfortable enough to come here. Sherlock wasn't usually the smoothest of caretakers when it came to children, to put it extremely mildly, but PJ looked at him with a calm, hooded look that spoke of a tentative, reserved trust.

"I've watched the recording of the night of the disappearance, and there is no noticeable break, so it's a well-put-together editing job," Sherlock continued, frowning lightly, watching PJ like a hawk as he took big bites. "We'll need to take a look at the actual digital coding and see how they were tampered with."

John yawned, a bit too tired to be impressed by the way Sherlock was knowledgeable about pretty much everything that could even somehow be incorporated into a criminal investigation.

"You're exhausted," Sherlock said, eyes snapping to him suddenly, "get some sleep."

"Yeah," John said, stifling another yawn, and dug out the note Sherlock had given him from his pocket, as well as his own notes. "Talked to Davis. Wrote down what he told me, but I don't think that was all of it. He wasn't very cooperative." He frowned and passed it to Sherlock, who glanced down at it. "If you need more you'll have to have someone else talk to him."

The corner of Sherlock's mouth lifted. "You punched him."

"Well, yeah," John said, jaw cracking as the yawn slipped out despite his trying to control it.

"You broke his nose."

"Hmm," John confirmed, feeling notably not guilty, and not even surprised that Sherlock probably knew that from the pattern of the dried blood on his knuckles or something equally incredible.

"You," Sherlock said, sounding a bit amused, and then looked as though that had been fully involuntary. They held eye contact for a long moment, and John wanted for a very clear, very wistful moment to just take Sherlock with him to bed and curl their bodies together and sleep the hours away to make up for the disaster of the previous night. And then, finally, maybe, _talk_. Talk. What happened. How was it. What did you have to do. Was it hard. Were there drugs. What aren't you telling me about the past two years. Why can't you tell me. What happened last night. Why couldn't you talk to me. Why can't you bear touches. And God, there was just _so much_. The timing of this case couldn't actually have been worse. Sherlock eventually blinked and broke the contact, focusing on something apparently around John's knees, a strange pinchedness flashing across his face before he hid it.

PJ had finished the sandwich and was now licking at his thumb to get the crumbs together.

"Go to bed," Sherlock instructed, sternly and gently at the same time. "I'm taking PJ to that video rental shop where they owe me a favour. They've got an illegal porn set in the back with a very advanced mixing and editing system." John didn't know what video rental shop he was talking about, but felt too sleepy to be curious.

"Text me when you need me," he said.

Sherlock looked as though he was going to say something, then changed his mind and simply nodded, bringing PJ to his feet with just a vague hand gesture. The boy sauntered down the stairs, not responding to John's goodbye, and Sherlock lingered, uncharacteristically, for another moment, face half turned towards John. "See you later," he finally said, sounding tense, and then he was gone, footsteps hard and somehow angry-sounding on the stairs.

–

John woke up to Sherlock sitting on his bed, fully dressed, shaking him gently to awareness.

"Need you," Sherlock said.

"Need you too," John mumbled before his consciousness kicked in fully and he groaned inwardly at himself, at the offering up of himself without the reassurance that it would be picked up in any way.

Apart from a small twitch of his lips, Sherlock didn't respond. Of course he didn't. "It's three in the afternoon. When you're up for it I want you to go talk to Smithson's widow. One of the reasons the investigation was re-opened was because Smithson had been getting death threats, and now she is, too."

"It's murder?" John groaned, stretching out under the covers, forcing his body to succumb to the demands of being awake.

"I have a hunch that it is, but there's something else," Sherlock said, and when John looked at him his eyes were glittering with fascination, with excitement; and he looked just like he always had, in that moment, the past two years fell away with ease, and he had never even been gone, he'd never left, he had always been sitting on the edge of John's bed, and he was there, throwing himself into the spiral of a mystery with such abandon it made John's heart ache, and _God_, he would have followed him everywhere, everywhere, he would have followed him into death if he'd only thought for one minute Sherlock could have used him there. "I've been interviewing the hospital personnel that has access to the morgue. There's one assistant that I'm interested in. Hodgins. Very twitchy. He has the same putrescine exposure. Big spot of infection in a cut on his wrist, and around his mouth. Was trying to hide it, too, so knows about it, unlike Davis. I think he's Davis' lover, probably passed the infection to him without him being aware of it," he said, and sounded so smug John had the half-serious, half-affectionate urge to smack him for it. "From what he's told you I'm reasonably sure Davis is otherwise uninvolved. And if it is murder, I'm almost certain Hodgins didn't kill him." He was silent for a split second. "Are you up?"

"Fine, fine," John said, sitting upright and rubbing his face. "I'll be down in a minute."

"Julian is all right," Sherlock said, in a complete non-sequitur.

"Hm? You mean –"

"Yes. He's all right. You asked how it was. It was –" Sherlock's look was one of concentration and unease. "I'll tell you later." And he stood up and descended the stairs rapidly, feet a swift patter of focused energy.

"Right," John said to the space where he had just been, feeling a bit overwhelmed in this moment of not-yet-full-awareness.

–

Smithson's wife, whose name was Jane and who reminded him a bit too much of Mary for comfort, was quite unapologetic about her lack of grief, and that was the strongest indication to John that she, at least, didn't kill her husband. She'd have been more likely to play the weeping widow if she'd actually been the murderer all along.

"He was a liar and a cheater," she said, almost unaffected, though her mouth was tense. "We were getting ready to file for divorce, but he wanted to wait until after the elections, and then he died."

"Were you on the holiday together?" John asked.

"Oh no," she said, "he was there with the next wife in line." Right, John thought. Lovely.

She told him, halfway through their talk: "Just find him. My children want to bury their father." He, uneasy, told her they'd do their best. She was getting police protection for the death threats that had now turned to her – she didn't seem to think he was murdered, although, as she put it, "There are enough people who hated his guts," and was genuinely puzzled as to why she would suddenly be targeted. She looked worried, and small, and he felt a twitch of sympathy for her as she let him out and said: "Please hurry up, so I can finally begin to live again. He wasn't the only one with a new life shaping up already."

He texted Sherlock a condensed version of what she'd said:

_Unhappy marriage, hated  
him, isn't really mourning him,  
doesn't understand the threats,  
doesn't think he was murdered,  
has had new partner for a while._

and received a

_Evidently not the killer. But maybe  
still somehow involved. If it was murder.  
Things taking gruesome turn. Meet  
me at Yard in twenty.  
SH _

in return and he didn't have a clue what any of that meant, so he simply went over to the Yard. Greg hailed him into his office from inside the open door. Sherlock was half-sitting on his desk in a spill of sunlight that tumbled through the window, stretched against it in a tableau of long clean lines of shirt and leg and half rolled-up sleeves and an infinitely focused expression as he was typing away on his phone. John couldn't help but drink in the sight of him, sun-washed, for a second.

Greg cleared his throat, bringing him out of it in an instant. "This is getting weirder than we'd expected," he said darkly, and rubbed his hand over the slight bluish shine of new stubble on his neck. Sherlock cracked a crooked smile in the direction of his phone at that.

"It's getting more _brilliant_, you mean."

John looked at him, and for a moment feared that he was going to drown in the wash of pure, uncomplicated happiness that overtook him at the sight of Sherlock, casual and poised both, every neuron in him working at full speed, hurtling forward to the centre of this thing they were circling, his body ready to spring into action under the superficial sheen of relaxation. It was beautiful, and it was real, and he was, _fuck_, he was _alive_.

When he looked at Greg, Greg was watching him with a look on his face that clearly said _my friend, you are well and truly fucked_.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

The weather held, an out-of-place, bright, blossoming spring afternoon that seemed almost surprised at itself. The case held, too, it held together, not degenerating into something that would disappoint Sherlock. There was no lead yet. John knew that only made him keener. He spent most of his time brooding, thinking on something that John wasn't aware of.

He was like a man returned from the dead.

Obviously.

–

_I'll tell you later_ didn't quite deliver, but then _later_could mean many different things, and time didn't quite behave as usual when they were on a case, anyway.

–

"So Hodgins can't have got the putrescine on him just by doing the normal stuff a morgue assistant would have to do with corpses?" John, sitting on the couch and taking a break from reading the press coverage of Smithson's accident and connecting it to the files Greg had passed them, asked Sherlock, who was striding to and fro energetically between the kitchen and the living room, hands linked on the back of his head.

"No," Sherlock said immediately.

John waited.

Sherlock acknowledged that after a moment, and turned to him in a jerk, whole body animated, his hands coming loose from his head and sliding down to his neck and to the front, resting on his throat in that new-found casualness of touch, as though his body was now more of a part of this thinking that it had ever been. John swallowed, momentarily distracted by the way Sherlock's collar was standing open.

"I know you're not a pathologist by training, but _honestly_, John." He looked at him with a specific kind of annoyance, and John's throat tightened; it was the look Sherlock always had when he was, in his own, strange way, pushing John to _try harder_. It was a peculiar, quite upsetting feeling of letting him down that John got whenever Sherlock turned that look on him. "Putrescine develops in _decomposing _bodies, not in freshly dead, coldly kept preserved ones, as you well know. He wouldn't have been involved in criminal autopsies as a junior assistant; he'd be handling the normal hospital deaths. And you don't get it on you just by touching corpses. He'd have to be... eating them perhaps, ingesting them somehow, smearing them on him. Cutting them open in a slightly more enthusiastic way than would be socially acceptable in the morgue." He grinned, suddenly brightened. "Rubbing them on his wounds. Putrescine is only lethal through actual ingestion in huge doses, and the contact on him is careful, deliberate. Maybe it's the infection that he likes. The cut I saw looked self-inflicted."

"Don't look so happy about that," John said, with an honest shudder. He'd seen many things, but the thought of someone rubbing decomposing human against themselves, inflicting wounds on themselves just so they could infect with death, was still rather more than just a bit upsetting.

"Oh, John, the thrill of sordidness is completely lost on you. I sympathise with the dullness that must be your life." Sherlock closed his eyes, bringing his fingers together under his chin, looking as though he were a Buddhist monk contemplating nirvana, and, well, that wasn't even that far from the truth, and John had to suppress a smile at the image.

"So, Greg was right? Necrophilia?" he then said, pulling a face almost involuntarily.

Sherlock said nothing, just quirked the corners of his mouth without opening his eyes. At least it was making _him _happy.

Though when he looked at Sherlock again, who still stood silently, his eyes closed, he didn't really look that happy at all.

–

"_No_, Lestrade," Sherlock was saying into his phone, all the while rolling his eyes at John, "_don't_ arrest him yet. We need to know where – I _know_–" He pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment. John could hear Greg's voice on the other side, incomprehensible, loud.

"Do you always talk to him like that on the phone?" John asked, amused.

"Not only on the phone, though it's a bit easier to do this way," Sherlock said, and then put the phone back in place. "Use your brains," he said flatly, then seemed to be mouthing something to himself John couldn't read, before he said: "We need to know where he's keeping the bodies … That's not actually a _crime_, Lestrade, and I didn't think you had such delicate sensibilities after all the things we've –" He pulled the phone away again. "Out of self-preservation I apparently delete sometimes how annoying he is," he told John, darkly, and John thought of a sniper for a moment, and of _I want you to tell Lestrade_, and couldn't help the quiver of a nervous smile passing over his lips. Sherlock started talking again: "For God's sake, just do as I _say_," before hanging up, and John could so easily imagine what Greg would look like, now, staring at the phone, partly annoyed, partly resigned, and partly amused. Allowing Sherlock to do this, because it went two ways – Greg knew how much he needed Sherlock, and he also knew how much Sherlock needed _this_.

John realised he was still smiling to himself a little, a strange half-smile full of many things.

–

"It's a an urban legend," Sherlock said suddenly, after a silence of at least an hour, during which John had very hesitantly gone forward into the disturbing online world of necrophilia and the people who practised it. Sherlock had ignored all of his _oh fuck_s, his _I'm going to be sick_s and his _remind me why you're not doing this yourself_s.

"What is?" John said, as he winced at the swiftness and enthusiasm of an acceptance e-mail he'd got from a forum he was trying to join and for which he'd had to write a very nauseating motivation e-mail.

"People passing on mould from corpses via necrophilia. It's a story that pops up now and then. You know, person gets rash, goes to doctor, finds out partner has been shagging dead people. Though that's not how it works, of course."

John turned to look at him. "Since when do you pay attention to stories?"

"I am very inclined to stories," Sherlock said, almost defensively.

John stared at him. "When they're interesting," Sherlock added.

"Right, because you really enjoy the development of fictional tension, and you certainly don't try to undermine it at every turn just to show off that you see through it," John said and turned back to the laptop, continuing a response to a thread on the forum with a wince, "and you're _certainly _very good at willing suspension of disbelief."

Sherlock rolled his eyes at his light irony. "Good stories don't require a suspension of disbelief."

"I really don't know if that's true," John said mildly, and then he looked up. "Wait, what is going on?"

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow.

"You're talking to me about the nature of fiction, while there might be a necrophiliac or eater of dead bodies taking out corpses from a hospital morgue and there might still be murder involved and Jane Smithson might be in mortal danger if there is."

"The solution is getting nearer. PJ is working on the tapes. You're using your inexhaustible magical internet powers to get us some backstory. Lestrade is protecting Jane Smithson. His idiots are analysing the death threats, not that that will help. We know where Hodgins is. And I –" his voice dropped dramatically, "am _thinking_."

"And talking to me."

Sherlock closed his eyes, and resumed pacing. "I'm always talking to you," he said, as though that explained anything at all, and he sounded reluctant, as though he would rather be saying something else.

–

"So what about the urban legend?" John remembered suddenly after another long while in which Sherlock hadn't said anything, contradicting _I'm always talking to you _in a way that felt a bit strange, as though he had been expecting a reaction, maybe, though John really couldn't tell.

"Nothing. Not important," Sherlock said, sounding tense, from where he was now sitting on the table, tapping his foot in a steady rhythm that John hadn't even tried to get him to stop, cross-legged like a thin, agitated Buddha, amidst the remains of dinners and experiments and things between the two and, also, still, some of the newspapers that screamed out his return, old news by now, normality restored, _where is he now, you are a miracle, will they rekindle their romance_. It seemed like a long time ago, already; time behaving strangely again, after the frozen chunk of immobility of the past two years, now a rush, splashes, things flowing by at high speed.

John looked at him, puzzled again. "Then why –"

Sherlock looked him dead in the eye, face bland.

"You're making it extremely hard for me to function, John."

John felt his eyebrows climbing across his forehead out of their own account. "What?"

"How are you doing it?" Sherlock said, sharply, and suddenly surged forward, sliding off the table and moving across the living room with surprising speed; he stooped down in front of John and dropped his hands on his lap, clicking the laptop shut with more force than the innocent machine deserved. He turned the pale lights of his eyes on John's face, searching for something.

"Sherlock!" John squeaked, startled by the sudden invasion. "What are you talking about?"

"How are you hiding from me what you want to say?" Sherlock snapped, his eyes flicking over John's face and then stilling, boring into his eyes with an intensity that became so hard to bear after only a couple of seconds that John's eyes closed involuntarily.

"I'm not –" he said, raising his voice with confusion and surprise, as he forced his eyes, the traitors, open again. Sherlock's teeth were working at his mouth, as though words were gathering at his lips and he was trying hard to keep them in.

"How are you being so normal?" Sherlock pressed, the words slipping out of his tense mouth with a momentum, as though they'd had to fight to get through; he leaned in further, bringing with him the confusion of the increased pressure of his tight gaze and the increased wonder of his body, unsettling, but also something that quickened the beat of John's blood until he could feel it in his head, throbs of different things – unease, surprise, want, anger.

"I have no clue what you're on about, you tosser," John snapped, allowing the easiest one – anger – to step in.

In a twist of reality that really shouldn't have existed, Sherlock threw him the _try harder _look.

"Stop – being – normal," he said and his jaw was squared with the extent to which he was clenching his teeth, biting down on something, only letting the words slip out like small shots, separated from each other, as though he was trying to isolate meaning, to stop things from touching each other.

"Stop it," John bit, harshly.

And Sherlock retreated, reeled back, as though it had been a physical slap.

And then, incongruously, impossibly, he came back with the strength of a boomerang, and latched his mouth onto John's with a bruising force, sending the laptop sliding off John's lap, fingers twisting into the neck seam of John's t-shirt, pushing down on his windpipe with so much force it hurt. He pulled back before John could respond, one way or another.

"What the fuck has got into you?" John gasped, dazed, and yanked Sherlock's hand away from his neck.

Sherlock's face was still a blank canvas, tense, drawn. "You have to _tell me_," he said, and his voice sounded more desperate than it should, coupled with the pale nothing of his expression.

"Tell you _what_?"

"Where you went that night, what you did, what you're going to do, you, don't hold out until this case is over, John, I can't do it with you here like this, you're – I can't focus, I can't read you, I can't deduce it, I can't," Sherlock said, rapidly, mouth pinkened and surprised, as though it hadn't seen the kiss coming, either.

John blinked at him a couple of times in what he was sure was a very stupid way. That Sherlock didn't comment on it spoke volumes. He had snapped his mouth shut again, cutting off the string of words that had been falling out, and was now biting down on his lips as though trying to lock them.

"I –" he said, then had such an overwhelming moment of _oh_ that he fell silent again. _Oh, of course_. Sherlock, seeing through emotions hiding themselves in each other, but never _why_. And it was a bit new, the clarity of this realisation that Sherlock didn't always see, that there was a screen between him and what had happened this time, and that that screen had to do exactly with what was the problem: the intangibility of emotion, the unpredictability of sentiment, which, though he'd never admit it, he'd never been able to catalogue in a systematic way. The volatility of it, from both sides of an equation he couldn't balance; John and himself. And it had been stupid – yes, stupid, idiot, idiot, idiot – for John to assume that Sherlock would be able to tell, would be able to see that _it is completely, utterly worth it, you fool_ had happened, because how could he, really? How could he, in the dark light of _I thought I was all right_? His throat tightened at the idea that Sherlock had heard him going out, and had had no clue where he was going, and wouldn't have been sure that he was coming back. It was terrible to think about.

"If you're going to leave permanently I'd prefer it if you did it now," Sherlock said, tone so even the content of his words seemed like they had fallen into a wrong scene, had been mis-translated, mis-quoted; and the _politeness of it_, so intrinsically not Sherlock, so obviously rehearsed.

He needed to be punched. So, Greg flickering into his consciousness for a split second, _those are usually the times when he's most vulnerable himself_, John did. His right hook was less powerful than it would have been with the momentum of leaning back and standing up, but his fist still connected with Sherlock's jaw in a satisfying loud snap of skin on skin and bone creaking underneath and pain blooming between them. Sherlock's face was forced sidewards, and he didn't quite fall over, though he staggered backwards before John's other hand, the one not curled in on itself with the pain of the punch, caught him and pulled him back in. "I am _not leaving_, Sherlock," John said heatedly, forcing Sherlock's surprised eyes to lock onto his, as the long fingers came to clutch at his jaw, "and if you ever, _ever_ say that to me again, after all that _you_'ve done, I swear to God I – I will shoot you with my own gun." And he was surprised at the sincerity of it, so wrong, so right. Language stretching around them, pushing at the membranes of their skins.

And apparently that was the right thing to say, because Sherlock's face folded open like a letter under the growing redness of the punch underneath his fingers, and as his eyes slipped shut there was such a bloom of relief, of overpowering, singular relief washing over his face, that John felt the tension in his own face slipping in sympathy.

"Right. Right, Sherlock, we... We had a _fight_," John said, and then amended: "Okay, no, we didn't. We have fights all the time, and this wasn't one. We had a _something_. I don't – I don't really know what, but..." He reached in and squeezed Sherlock's shoulders. "Did you really think I'd be running away from this not even ten days after I asked you to do this with me?"

Sherlock opened his eyes. "I didn't know," he said quietly, and once more, there was the distaste for himself, the simmering anger at his helplessness at – this, whatever it was, at seeing things through that distorting mirror. Admitting that he didn't know; John knew by now how terrible that was for him, losing track of the threads that pulled at his fingertips until he touched the core of something, getting lost in the tangle of himself and John.

"I went to Mary's," he said, talking around the surprisingly huge chunk of tenderness lodged in his throat, because those questions still needed answering. Sherlock's eyes snapped to his. "I admit I wanted to talk to her. I was..." He forced himself to keep the eye contact as Sherlock narrowed his eyes slightly. "I was a bit confused." Sherlock was watching him intently. "But I didn't end up going in. It was... I dunno, I realised that I... _want_... to go through this with you, okay?" He had the urge to pull his hands from Sherlock and pass them over his face, and fought it, because there were two languages at play here, and what he was saying, falteringly, needed the support of his body.

Sherlock fell forward slowly, folding to his knees, like gravity was dropping by to say hello in a very gentle acquaintance, until his head was pressing into John's chest, a warm weight, an anchor.

They sat for a long moment in the strange, slightly awkward embrace. Sherlock's breathing warmed the fabric of his light summer shirt.

"We need to find a way to talk, Sherlock," John said, wondering at it all.

Sherlock pressed his face further into John. "Evidently we do, if you consider hitting me the best way to get your point across," he said, and John laughed a little at that.

"You shouldn't – wait so long before asking me if something's going on," he said, a bit hesitantly, beating down a nervous giggle at the idea of giving Sherlock relationship advice – because, well, that was what was going to have to happen, now that they were actually _in_a relationship. Or trying to be, because what were their lives, honestly.

"You shouldn't go away," Sherlock's quiet response came, and it was like an anchor dropping into John's stomach, and oh, how he wanted to take Sherlock's face in his hands and look at him and say _I never will again, never, I will never, ever leave this flat without you, if you stay here forever then so will I _but reality caught up with him, a rush of salty realness over the sweetness of fantasy. He was done with making promises about forever he couldn't ever be sure he would keep – and Sherlock was not the audience for that, anyway, as non-romantic, as sober as he was. It would only feel like a lie.

"Sometimes I will," he therefore said. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you where I was going. I should have. But you know I sometimes need a little time to get a grip on things." Sherlock let out a small huff of agreement against his shirt; _yes, you can be worryingly slow sometimes_. "Getting out of here is something that works for me sometimes. It doesn't mean I'm... not coming back. I'm never _leaving_, okay? I've always come back, haven't I?"

Sherlock offered no real response but the tightening of his fingers in John's shirt. Maybe he was thinking about how long it had taken _him _to come back.

"But when I do go away for a bit and you're not sure what it means, you can – just ask me," John continued. He waited for a bit, not sure how Sherlock would respond to the suggestion of him asking John anything at all that wasn't just a disguised attempt at showing off.

"Yes," Sherlock mumbled, "yes."

"It'll be fine," John said after a beat, a repeat from what had happened in the shower.

Sherlock, meeting him halfway, said: "An inane platitude. How dull." And by the way he angled his face so his nose could press into John's chest, John knew that he had him back.

And to prove it, Sherlock said, muffled: "Let's go tail Hodgins."

–

His phone chimed, the cheerful tune of an alarm, not the buzz of a text, as he was following Sherlock's long, distinct shape, his shadow even longer than he was in the rapidly failing light of the sinking sun; falling into their roles easily, leader and follower, Sherlock sauntering around, surprisingly convincing as a casual tourist, even with his incongruous coat on such a sultry evening (at least he wasn't wearing his scarf) and John his shadow. Sherlock didn't often ask him to double, and John suspected that maybe there was an aspect to it of getting himself under control again, out from under the close presence of John, and well, that was okay if he needed it. It was dusk, the still, fluttering end of another warm day, a bit more feverish than the previous ones – a storm was brewing somewhere, and there was a small hush of expectancy hanging over the warm streets of London.

He worked his phone out of his pocket, not losing sight of Sherlock's stretchedness, his presence, walking between the pools of light streaming from the street lights flickering into life; Sherlock's _there-ness_, which he appreciated for so many different reasons, but then he read on his screen: _Anniversary of Giles' death_ and he did lose sight then, for a moment that was enough to lead to another moment of _holy fuck where did he go _because Sherlock was good at disappearing, as life had taught both of them.

But he found him again, true to form, true to life, as Sherlock stopped behind the pillars of one of the neo-gothical buildings Hodgins apparently had the pleasure to pass every single day and examined them with a touristy interest as their target walked past him. And as if he felt the disconnect of John, he was suddenly looking at _him_, incongruously, out of sync, but too far away to actually read any expression on his face in the gathering darkness. But he was sure it spelled _stay with me, John, you idiot_. And he could conform to it; he actually just had, in their living room, and he could do it again, had done it so many times already, but now; a bit of _no_ mixed in with a lot of _yes_.

Right now: _yes_. The _no _didn't have a right, not now, at least.

So he did follow Sherlock all the way there, until Hodgins went through the normal door of an entirely normal flat, in a normal side of London, and Sherlock sent him a text: _No, not normal. SH _and he couldn't really focus on anything else for a second apart from Sherlock's disorienting mind-reading ability that surfaced at unexpected times and was therefore all the more unsettling.

But then there it was: a_nniversary of Giles' death_. He gave himself a mental kick for programming the alarm to only go off at the end of the day; why?

_If you say so. Look, I'm sorry,  
but I might need to go somewhere._

Sherlock's response was:

_Right now?  
SH_

He flinched a bit; he could imagine the scowl down to the smallest detail.

_Yes. Sorry. Bit of an emergency_.

And there was a too-long stretch of silence, but when his phone pinged, it said

_What does this mean, John?  
SH_

And he smiled, the nugget of love in his chest trembling so hard he had to push his hand against it.

_It means a friend needs  
me right now. I'll probably  
be home when you get back.  
If I'm not, just text me._

The response was swift:

_Go.  
SH_

And he did this, just because he felt he needed to, this time, maybe it wouldn't be necessary the next time, but it was all happening a bit fast. So that he sent

_Are you okay with this_

without the question mark, without the actual uncertainty, was more there because of what they were now; lovers? partners? figuring things out-persons? than because of any real doubt, because Sherlock didn't often do things without being sure, except when – and he felt his stomach twisting at this – it was getting him off (_Was this okay?_; _Good?_; and of course _I thought I was all right_, small things shining through under the now faltering cover of _wasting valuable time_, where he had still been able to hide).

And that Sherlock responded to this text of redundancy – _Obviously. SH _– spoke just as many volumes; upholding the connection between them. John allowed himself a smile.

The text he sent Bill was many different things at once; cluttered-up guilt and empathy and sadness and more guilt folded into the clean lines of the mechanical curl of technological lettering.

_Hey, bastard. If you need  
anyone to hit or to swear at  
or to get extremely plastered  
__with tonight, I'm offering up  
myself.  
J_

And Bill's response was soberingly quick:

_Sounds like a better idea  
than any of the ones Ive had  
so far_

so all he could really say to Sherlock was

_Yep, needed elsewhere, can  
you manage?_

and received a swift

_Of course I can.  
SH_

in response, and he grinned at the tangibility of the raised eyebrows, the _really, John?_

He had a pinch of uncertainty over the

_Be careful._

but sent it, because there were times when stating the obvious was necessary, even to Sherlock.

–

_Dont want to be here anymore_

Bill sent him, and then, quickly

_At my flat I mean not intending  
to off myself_

and again, swiftly

_That would be conforming to  
expectations too much_

John felt a breath slip out of him at it, and he supposed it could be taken in different ways, but he hoped it meant that Bill was still somewhat all right.

_Pub?  
J_

he fired back, beating an agitated way over the street, trying not to think too much about leaving Sherlock alone.

_Not sure if Im up to that  
tonight_

And his worlds were colliding with a bit too much speed, the compartments that he'd been trying to hold were folding into each other, but there was nothing to it, because the pressure of life was as uncaring as it was, and he could do nothing but try to hold himself in its push.

_My new flat? 221B  
Baker St. I'll be there in  
twenty mins or so.  
J_

When he did arrive, Bill was already standing by the door, illuminated by the trickly light of the street lamps, shoulders dunked, hands deep in the pockets of his trousers.

Bill didn't usually do _hello_s. John said to him, instead: "You're lucky I bought beer a couple of days ago."

Bill smiled grimly, uncoiled a little, and pulled his hands from his pockets as though he was going to do something with them. "Yes, I am an extremely lucky man with lots of things to be grateful for in my unbelievably well-filled and satisfying life," he said, and he showed his teeth in a smile of glass. John sent him a grimace that said _I'm sorry _in a way that Bill was much more receptive to than if he'd actually said the words.

John unlocked the door. Mrs. Hudson was dusting off the frame of one of the pictures in the hallway.

"Oh, Mrs. Hudson," John said, "this is Bill. Bill, this is Mrs. Hudson, our landlady."

"Oh, hello," she chirped, looking a bit dotty in her apron.

Bill shook her hand with a forced, very insincere smile. She looked between them a bit curiously, before John said, slightly awkwardly: "Well, talk to you later, Mrs. Hudson," and led the way up the stairs.

Upstairs, he looked over the war zone of the living room; cleaning up, already an extremely rare occurrence in 221B, was completely forgotten during casework.

But it was Bill, so that didn't really matter. "I'm sure you can tell how our flat reflects the state of my life," John said, in a flat, pale attempt at humour.

"You should see my place," Bill said, too gently for him.

"Sit down," John urged him, and Bill went over to the sofa and sat in it, pushing John's laptop out of the way, which was still lying where it had slipped off his lap when Sherlock had sprung that kiss of – of wills, basically, and of disguises, on him.

As John opened the fridge and tried to feel around for the cans of beer he remembered buying, before Sherlock had brought in some nicely rotting flesh to look at the levels of putrescine at different points in decomposition (at least he'd put them into air-tight containers), Bill said, too lightly: "The illustrious Sherlock not in, then?"

"No," he called back, wincing and holding his breath as he had to reach into the fridge a bit deeper, "we're, um, we're on a case. Well, he is, really."

Bill said nothing until John was sitting next to him and he had slowly swallowed a big gulp from the beer can. "So are you two finally shagging?" he then said. His voice was harsh. Now that John took a look at him, he looked a bit drunk, already.

John felt something failing inside him, and if he wasn't a doctor he might have thought it was his heart. "I –" he began, and could have gone on to _don't know what you mean_, but then that was silly, because Bill had been there, for some of the different times that _if only there was a way iddoeverythingdifferently I'd kiss him until we have no breath anymore _had happened. He fell silent instead.

Bill rolled his eyes. "Just answer the question."

And when did this abyss open up between them; deeper than the one he felt with Ian, nowadays, or with Sharon, because with them there had been bridges left intact, still.

Bill took another gulp of beer, and then his face seemed to soften, which was so out of character it was a bit frightening, and for a moment he looked as though _he_had a reason to be sorry. "John," he said, "I've never told you what happened on the night Giles died."

John licked his lips. "Car accident, right?" he said, tensely.

Bill pressed the beer can against the side of his face, shielding part of it off. "Yes. You know I was in the car with him."

John nodded, though Bill wasn't looking at him. What was happening, exactly? What was this feeling of losing control, again?

"I never told you... I never told any of you, that –" He abruptly removed the beer can, and John was staring at him, and there was the shock of sudden eye contact. Bill's brown eyes were shiny with tears, and John had never, ever seen that before. It had always been Bill that had made _him_cry. "– that I caused the accident." He drew in a shuddering, wet breath. "He lost control of the wheel because I had just told him that I was in love with him."

In the long silence that followed, Bill used the seam of his sleeve to wipe away the tears that were shiveringly dripping from the lashes of his right eye – his left eye remained dark and dry.

"I'm so sorry," John said; gasped, because there was no air left in him, really – and he used the words, this time, because his face was doing enough already to carry its part, and it didn't seem like it could be enough, ever, at all.

"So you see," Bill said, and incongruously, impossibly, grinned, even as an escaped tear painted a shiny line on his cheek, feeling its way over his stubble and rolling into the corner of his mouth, "I have a bit of an extremely unhealthy, psychologically unsound, fucked up personal investment in you shagging Sherlock."

"Yes," John said immediately, the words falling over each other, "yes, we are. We are – shagging. We're – together. I can't – I didn't – Bill."

"Good," Bill hummed, and pressed his eyes closed, triggering a new tear that followed the path shaped by the previous one.

John didn't know what to do. At all.

"Because the – the thing is," Bill eventually continued, eyes still closed, breath hitching with suppressed crying, "I'm not actually – sure that he didn't die because he was – _happy_. He actually... looked at me just before the crash. I – I dream about that l-look." He sobbed, now, the sound ripping from his throat with some violence, and his large hand cracked the beer can. For a couple of long, faltering moments of time curling back on itself, he was incapable of speech, and accepted John's hand on his broad shoulder, though it must have felt like the last thing that could be of any use right now. After a while he regained a modicum of control over his breathing. "I can't say for sure," he said, voice cracked, "that I didn't... make it up. But I think – I remember that he looked _happy_." John's hand tightened around his shoulder involuntarily. "But I will never," his mouth twitched, its corner getting glazed by one tear after the other, gathering there, sometimes rolling past it to his chin, where they collected and dropped off, small spots of liquid grief on his trousers, "_never_ know what he would have – said in response. Because I survived, and he – _didn't_."

"God, Bill," John said, and his voice genuinely sounded like it belonged to someone else. The seconds ticked away, congealed, thick.

"If you hadn't told him by now I think I might have done it for you," Bill said, a bit calmer, hand coming up to lightly disturb the line of the tears. "Because I can't tell you how – _furious_ –" and he bit down on the word, as though he wanted to keep it in, but it still slipped out like a hiss of hatred, "– it would have made me to see you, of all people, go back to living like that." _To slip back into the terrible easiness of it, of living with undeclared love. Of living with the illusion of more time, new possibilities, no need to do it now. Of living with_ I will one day _instead of _if only I had.

"You're right," John said, and surprised himself by it; he could barely feel his mouth moving, his face felt numb.

There was a silence. "If only I'd waited a bit longer, if I'd just stopped myself, then – maybe –" Bill said, then scrunched up his face in what John could tell was a well-rehearsed motion, a movement of _no_, "but I can't – think about that, John, because I'm just another bloke, and no one gives a fuck, and I will never get what you got." And that was so familiar, the _if only_, the impossible weight of it, the way it pulled, the way it sucked, the way it never changed, the way it never, ever helped, the way it was clear that it wasn't something to think about while being the only thing worth thinking about, that John almost felt himself twitching forward to touch Bill with more than just his hand; but Bill wasn't a hugger at all, and really neither was John, and he stopped himself.

"I don't know why I got what I got," he said breathlessly, trying to convince his lungs to start working again.

"Neither do I," Bill said, strangledly, and from the small shocks of his shoulder under his hand John could tell that he was crying in earnest now.

They sat for a long while, a very long while. Tears dripped onto Bill's trousers in a random, steady, heartbreaking pattern. He barely made any sound, though his breathing, laboured, hitching, sounded wet, and his shoulder trembled under John's hand. And then, after a while, he stilled; his was a deep, dark, grainy silence, attracting the dust particles in the flat, clogged, choked. John felt his eyes stinging.

Suddenly, Bill laughed, a deep, gruff, broken sound.

"Now what is this shit," he said, voice dark and deep like earth, "grown men crying like teenagers. Bring us more beer, John, so we can save this monster of an evening."

And John removed himself from the sofa, pulling back bit by bit, and got to his feet, unsteadily. "Right," he said, and then did.

And was there anything to be saved? There was a deep silence between them, punctuated by the distant rumbles of the storm approaching, but it wasn't wrong, and eventually Bill mentioned, sighing with mock-annoyance, that there was a terrible movie on tonight Ian would like. And apparently John could read between his lines sometimes, maybe now far better than ever before, and switched it on, and allowed the biting humour of Bill's improved dialogue to pierce through the haze of shock and painful, stinging, misplaced guilt curled around him, and at one point where they were both laughing, silently reconstructing the snapped defenses of themselves under the sheen of that, he realised with an arresting lucidity that Bill was his friend, and that there was still some truth in the world.

Outside, the rain was falling, whipping the streets into penance for their hubris, driving away the gathered up clumps of springtime warmth on the pavement; and the thunder made the glass in the windows in 221B Baker Street tremble until John opened them, and brought Sherlock's music things into the safety of the kitchen, but otherwise allowed the weather to come and play inside, feeling the spray of rain all the way to where they were sitting. They could use a bit of new air.

–

And so when Sherlock came home, soaked, well past midnight, trudging up the stairs as though he were carrying a lot of weight, John was waiting for him in the doorway, and allowed him to come in, and then pulled him into such a tight hug that Sherlock made a small _oof_ing sound.

"I love you," John said into the spot where the wet collar of his coat was open, revealing the barest sliver of shiny, slippery skin, "I love you." Language, uncomfortable, jittery, changing, inadequate, leaping, blooming across the chasm of this moment.

"I –" Sherlock said, sounding surprised, and John pulled at him until they were kissing and his hair was between Sherlock's damp fingers and there was some truth in the world and then when they broke apart Sherlock slid the sharp rain-cooled curve of his nose against the line where John's forehead became his hair, his breath coming hot and fast from his pliant, storm-dampened lips, and it was the same and it was different, because it was them.

They actually went to bed together, and Sherlock even allowed John with a grimace and a choice comment on infantilism in relationships (reduced gloriously to silence, though, when John graciously offered to discuss his mother issues) to towel out his hair, and when they slid together Sherlock accepted John's face into the crook of his neck, and his arms were long and warm and he felt like such a focused, warm presence, a collection of sharp, alert life, that John said it again, _I love you_, not out loud, but mouthed against the skin of Sherlock's neck, where the blood played.

Sherlock still heard, of course. "You," he whispered; the smile was audible.

And that he was gone when John awoke in the middle of the night was more than okay, because it was what he had expected; Sherlock didn't sleep during cases, and he was a lunatic who couldn't shut things out when they pressed at him, but that he had shared the long, tumbling moment of John's falling asleep against him without comment said so many things, so many things unsaid that trickled slowly into his dream, hard to make out, as if translated from afar, but still so _there_, that John curled his arms around himself under the covers, and didn't even feel alone.


	13. Chapter 13

Hey to everyone who's been reading this here on ! As you might know, has recently been deleting fanfics that exceed a T/R rating. This fic, though it has escaped scrutiny so far, apparently, is therefore at risk of deletion. I direct all of you who're waiting for an update to my LJ (holyfant dot livejournal dot com; the tag "the fabric of life" will give you every chapter) or my easier to navigate AO3 (archiveofourown dot org/works/384577?view_full_work=true). This fic is FINISHED at both locations. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for the feedback!


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